Ry David Bradley's new series of work, Blockscapes, have been produced in the South of France during his recent residency session in Ardèche. Produced at a scale that aims to capture the cinematic and painterly history of this region these new works derive from the history of landscape painting, such as the views that inspired Cezanne. The digital brush used for these paintings is one that recalls impressionist and expressionist tendencies, but in a manner that is distinctly of the 21st century.
The works are then woven using only red, green and blue threads in Japan in a high resolution tapestry that operates in a screen like way, but can last hundreds of years without software or other issues restraining its digital posterity. The titles of the locations of the works are constructed using an algorithm to produce new locations that exist for the first time ever, giving them a unique identity.
Just as the material of the work is in dialogue with historical art production, the inclusion of canonic source-material raises Bradley’s ongoing investigation into new heights.As nature, technology and game worlds continue to merge and mirror each other, a synthesis of both is emerging in an organic ways, with which Bradley points the way to new formats of painting.
This is the first work from an ongoing series that aims to provide some physicality to the digital landscape and of which a larger body of work will be presented at Brigade in 2022.