Mark Bradford's work addresses the spontaneous systems and networks that materialize within cities, such as displaced communities, patterns of violence, and black-market economies. Visually complex and often cartographic in form, Bradford's paintings incorporate elements of the everyday—from end papers used for perming hair to billboard poster remnants, polyester cord, caulking, bleaching agents, and carbon paper—to draw attention to what he refers to as the "invisible underbelly of a community."

Ostensibly abstract, Bradford's paintings are less commentaries on consumerism than they are examinations of specific conditions that shape communities. For his Merchant Posters series, he collected billboards affixed to cyclone fencing and derelict buildings in his neighborhood in South Central Los Angeles. He then used these advertisements—hawking, in bold graphics, services targeted directly at local inhabitants, from foreclosure assistance to paternity testing—to make collages.

Most recently, his projects have dealt with the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans. They include a 2008 installation on the rooftop of the Carnegie Museum of Art in Pittsburgh, PA, in which he spelled out the words "HELP US" in white stones, and Mithra, a three-story "ark" made from stacked shipping containers covered in the battered signage left around the city in the wake of the disaster, made for Prospect.1 New Orleans.
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