Brad Kahlhamer

Brad Kahlhamer fuses an exuberant embrace of expressionist painting with the visionary tradition of Native American art. Drawing from country western and the Native American rock music scene, the artist’s visionary landscapes swirl with an atavistic energy; the paintings seem to have a sound that accompanies their visual rhythm. The great American bald eagle sweeps though the paintings almost as a surrogate for the artist, representing his immersion into his personal American landscape. Kahlhamer has created his own world in these paintings mixing representations of the real into a visionary “third place,” as the artist describes it.

Deitch Projects was recently pleased to present Girls and Skulls, an exhibition of new works on paper by Brad Kahlhamer. The exhibition brought together two of the artist’s favorite themes, sex and death. Kahlhamer is particularly interested in the space between sex and death, which he sees as spirituality.

A book on the Urban Prairie Girls series accompanied the exhibition. Edited by Emily Schlesinger, one of the artist’s Urban Prairie Girls models, reproductions of the portraits are paired with interviews with each model. The Urban Prairie Girls tell their stories and talk about the process of posing for the artist. The catalogue is available for purchase through the gallery.

Brad Kahlhamer’s exhibition, Let’s Walk West recently appeared at the Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art, AZ. The catalogue published on the occasion of the exhibition, titled Let’s Walk West, features an introductory essay written by Susan Krane, and is available through the Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art Press.

artist bio

Brad Kahlhamer
76 Grand Street, New York