Bradley Pitts

Bradley Pitts’ work grieves loss without physical absence—an experience that relates both to the socioeconomic and environmental precarities of the current moment as well as his growing up around addiction. His materials (whether found, purchased, made, harvested, or acquired for personal use) are employed as residue—of systems and cultures, of thoughts and beliefs, of lives lived and actions performed. The resulting sculptures are pile-ups of physical and mental forms in which the histories and associations of his materials are forced to meet and grapple with one another, producing moments of harmony, conflict, and/or contradiction. As with any forced cohabitation, some of the elements find harmony with their neighbors while others produce conflict or contradiction. Some a tense silence.

Pitt’s process entails feeling through materials by connecting them with his personal history, emotions, and intellectual interests. In doing so, he leverages his background in art, architecture, and engineering as well as the disorienting experience of growing up in an alcoholic home. As a result, industrial methods and materials contrast and contend with his intimate, personal realities. The resulting work may be emotional, funny, serious, and ironic.

Pitts was born and raised in Manhattan, spending many summers in the mountains of North Carolina where he learned to camp and canoe on lakes and whitewater rivers. Educated at MIT, the Rijksakademie van beeldende kunsten (NL), and Columbia University, Pitts’ work has been shown at the Netherlands Institute for Media Art (NL), Kunsthalle Bern (CH), UC Riverside, Pioneer Works, and the Jewish Museum, among other venues.