Brad Kahlhamer
Francesca Kaufmann Gallery, Milan
Through July 20
For the first time in Italy Brad Kahlhamer is showing large
paintings and watercolors. Through his own poetic sensibility, he presents a
visual and graphic transcription of the discovery of his lost roots caused by
an autobiographical event common to many Native Americans. As a Native American
boy, he was adopted by a family of German descent. He spent his childhood in
Arizona and Wisconsin, quite removed from the iconography and visual influence
of his original culture and tribe. The artist often speaks of a "Third
Space" in his paintings. This space happens after the first one – the intimate
sharing of his childhood memories – and the second space – organized and focused
on the schemes of western culture and particularly on New York culture (Kahlhamer
has worked in NY as a designer, illustrator and musician). The physical space
of American geography occurs in the white painted areas of the canvas – which
he soils in a messy way with a warm brown paint which is a symbol, for the artist,
of earth and live flesh. This becomes a reference to the giant pictorial scheme
(painting without an easel) that was adapted by the early Abstract Expressionists
from the New York School and for whom the young artist has great admiration.
The color he applies onto the white areas of the paintings and paper, which
loose their material support to become pure space, becomes its own unique symbolic
strength. It is able to transform a blue stain into sky and wind and a black
paint brush stroke into a confused Eastern environment and metropolis. He is
able to create, through his magical valence, small wild boars, stylized buffalo,
elongated cactus plants, figures in canoes, portraits of women with long black
breads, and realist and amusing self portraits. Rediscovered fragments from
his personal life navigate and swim in the ample space without barriers and
– as the title Friendly Frontier indicates from his solo show in New
York last year – they are mixed in with single words painted in a confused and
light touch. He writes them in a shaky and indecisive line and ties them to
the spoken lingo of Eastern society. They are able to reveal names by presenting
a lexicon of his newly relived and rediscovered ancestral universe.
Paola Noé
Translation by Holly Miller
