At the Amorepacific Museum of Art in Seoul, visitors are invited to walk directly across Mark Bradford’s monumental floor installation Float — a sprawling 600-square-meter expanse stitched from weathered posters, torn flyers, newspapers and coarse hemp rope.
Far from a smooth stroll, the uneven surface forces slow, deliberate movement, turning walking into a performance of balance and attention. For Bradford, the work disrupts the traditional hierarchy of painting by lifting it off the wall and grounding it in the physical remnants of his Los Angeles neighborhood.
“I’m questioning what makes a painting, the hierarchy and purity of painting,” said the 63-year-old artist.
Bradford, a Black, queer abstractionist, anchors nonrepresentational art in lived realities — race, gender, inequality, gentrification, and the memory of the AIDS crisis. His materials, often salvaged from city streets, carry the social history he calls essential to his work: “I consider it abstract art with social memory.”
The exhibition, Keep Walking, spans Bradford’s celebrated “End Paper” series — delicate grids made from beauty salon perm papers like those used in his mother’s shop — and Death Drop, a rare figurative sculpture modeled on his own body. The prone figure references both the flamboyant climax of queer ballroom culture and the devastating toll of AIDS.
The show also debuts “Here Comes the Hurricane,” works layered with textures and colors evoking disaster and resilience, inspired by histories from Hurricane Katrina to America’s first known drag queen, William Dorsey Swann.
Bradford says his Seoul debut is a call to movement — through beauty, hardship, and history. “All I ask is to keep walking — through the storm, across shifting patchwork, toward whatever comes next.”
Keep Walking runs through Jan. 25, 2026, at the Amorepacific Museum of Art.
Sayart / Maria Kim sayart2022@gmail.com
