Joe Bradley’s colorful and dynamic paintings invite viewers to consider the interplay between the deliberate and spontaneous, and the abstract and figurative

American artist Joe Bradley is widely recognized for his expansive visual practice that encompasses painting as well as sculpture and drawing. Over the past twenty years, Bradley has continually reinvented his approach to art, creating a distinctive body of work that has ranged from modular, minimalist-style paintings and sculptures to rough-hewn, heavily worked surfaces featuring pictographic and abstract elements, to refined and layered compositions that, as critic Roberta Smith notes, “balance gracefully between representation and abstraction.”

Joe Bradley: Vom Abend/Animal Family presents work from two celebrated exhibitions at David Zwirner, in New York and London in 2024 and 2025. Bradley worked on the paintings in these two groups simultaneously, and their mutual influence is perceptible in the presence of shared or repeated colors, forms, and shapes. These paintings suggest a new turn in the artist’s practice, as figurative elements emerge as central compositional structures. Accompanying works on paper further illuminate Bradley’s multidimensional practice. An essay by art critic Caoimhín Mac Giolla Léith situates this series within the artist’s larger oeuvre, discussing Bradley’s evolution in art-historical and formal terms. In a conversation, Bradley and fellow artist Amy Sillman explore the role of humor in art––and the influence of comics in Bradley’s work––and discuss their relationships to art history, the embodied act of painting, and the catalysts that spur their production.