In an age in which bananas taped to a wall fetch millions at auction, retrospectives like Mark Bradford\u2019s Keep Walking<\/em> at Hamburger Bahnhof \u2013 Nationalgalerie der Gegenwart in Berlin remind us that art has a duty to be much more than a desperate headline-grabbing slapstick joke. It makes it unequivocally clear that to some artists, art is a space for collectively processing life\u2019s wealth, challenges, and complexity: the joys and paradoxes, the traumas and reaffirmations. Bradford\u2019s exhibition does just that: gallery after gallery, it surprises visitors with a multimedia polyphony of approaches and perspectives that cast light into the deepest crevices of the human condition\u2014historically grounded, materially connoted, aesthetically alluring: each piece is a discovery into the realities of Black queerness and its many ramifications, dark and bright.<\/p>\n\n\n\n This career survey offers a rich exploration of Bradford\u2019s evolving approach to materiality, figuration, abstraction, and social commentary. Best known for his large-scale mixed-media works, Bradford creates pieces that are at once visually compelling and conceptually intricate, engaging with themes of urban life, race, identity, and the broader socio-political landscape. The most striking feature of his works in Keep Walking<\/em> is perhaps his distinctive use of materiality. Drawing heavily on his experience growing up in Los Angeles and working in a neighbourhood shaped by social and economic inequalities, he often incorporates elements of the urban environment. His materials\u2014which include collaged paper, vinyl, rope, and found objects\u2014provide a tactile quality that engages and connects. These materials are archaeological in essence: they form strata of history, memory, and the lived experience of communities that have seeped into our cultural ideals, fears, and dreams.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The exhibition opens with a pair of monumental works facing each other: I Don\u2019t Know What I Am <\/em>(2024)and You Don\u2019t Have to Tell Me Twice <\/em>(2023). A myriad of numerical sequences that simultaneously gesture toward the endless cycles of life\u2019s arrivals and departures\u2014train timetables, unknown quantities, and concentration camp\u2013style IDs\u2014summon an existential kind of anonymity that makes us feel powerless before colossal political powers. Worn out, discarded, obsolete: these quasi-abstract panels evoke deaths, births, losses\u2014ledgers of unknown accounts? The impossibility of recording all that matters? The impossibility of knowing what matters? Bradford often relies on a conceptual openness\u2014a space the viewer can inhabit as a performative interpreter, never pushed to the side role of the passive spectator but always engaged and, for better or worse, implicated.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The Merchant Posters<\/em> series (2024) references a phenomenon deeply rooted over centuries: how marginalized communities have been marketed, commodified, and used as tools in the expansion of capitalist systems. Specifically, the series draws attention to the legacy of slavery, colonialism, and racial capitalism, examining how the bodies and labour of Black people, as well as other disenfranchised groups, have been exploited for profit. Layered in material sedimentations that imply the work of time, the historical weight of the term \u201cmerchant\u201d\u2014suggesting transactions involving people or culture as commodities\u2014resonates with contemporary issues such as the commercialization of Black culture by the music, fashion, and entertainment industries, as well as the exploitation of racialized labor in global supply chains.<\/p>\n\n\n\n A larger, monolithic work with a demarcated spectral presence, Manifest Destiny <\/em>(2023), overlays visual abstraction and cultural references to reflect on the socio-political and racial dynamics that underpin American beliefs, particularly in relation to marginalized communities: a key ideology of American imperialism, linking the nation\u2019s growth to a divine mission or inherent right to expand, even if that meant the displacement or subjugation of Indigenous and enslaved peoples. The narrative is laden with power, conquest, and violence. Bradford uses the title as a jumping-off point to explore the enduring legacies of this expansionist ideology, especially as they pertain to race, land, and power.<\/p>\n\n\n\n At times, the persistent critical commentary takes on a vaguely humorous or tongue-in-cheek tone\u2014one that is nonetheless always tinged with a darkness capable of drawing us into the depths of critical considerations. This is certainly the case with the video work Spiderman<\/em> (2015). The title itself introduces a sense of complexity and contradiction, alluding to both a popular superhero icon and the social realities faced by marginalized individuals. The work features an audio track of a Black transgender performer delivering a comedy set. Underlined by uncomfortable crowd laughter, the performer\u2019s quips eventually devolve into a metaphorical dimension alluding to HIV transmission.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Set to a slowed-down version of the 1978 disco hit \u201cGrateful\u201d by queer icon Sylvester, the video work Deimos<\/em> (2015) features orange roller-skate wheels bouncing across the screen. What at first glance seems joyous is swiftly revealed to be an image of disorientation and loss. Once again, the reference is simultaneously historical and contemporary: the demolition of the roller disco and gay club The Roxy in 2007 serves as an ominous reminder of the importance of safe spaces and the threat that their loss poses to contemporary marginalized cultures.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In a similar vein, returning to the tragicomedy thread that Bradford so confidently navigates, Death Drop<\/em> (2023) proposes a subtle and very effective overlay of distant and yet related realities. Bradford\u2019s monumentalized and ghostly-looking body\u2014which from a certain angle echoes the iconography of a crucifixion, its arms being spread open\u2014lies on the floor in a \u201cdeath drop\u201d pose, a move rooted in ballroom culture and queer expression in which dancers suddenly drop to the floor as if they\u2019ve been shot or tased. A compelling work that delves into themes of identity, violence, and the vulnerability of Black life, the sculpture poignantly furthers Bradford\u2019s exploration of memory, violence, and the dense intersection of race and power.<\/p>\n\n\n\n A few galleries down, Float<\/em> (2019), a walkable floor installation, challenges museological conventions of preciousness to generate a heightened awareness of our own walking through space. Crafted with Bradford\u2019s characteristic use of layered found materials, this piece reflects his broader interest in themes of resilience, systemic oppression, and the lived experiences of marginalized communities. The title evokes ideas of both lightness and persistence amidst challenging environments, tying into his exploration of socio-political narratives.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The exhibition ends with Niagara<\/em> (2005), a poignant and deceptively simple three-minute video featuring Melvin, Bradford\u2019s former neighbour, confidently strutting down a South Los Angeles street, walking away from the camera. This scene mirrors the iconic walk by Marilyn Monroe in the 1953 film Niagara<\/em>. The grimy, trash-strewn street contrasts sharply with the deliberate grace of Melvin\u2019s walk, offering a subtle critique of socio-economic disparities while at the same time celebrating agency and self-expression as queer, self-affirming body language becomes a metaphor for seeking empowerment amidst adversity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Walking, moving, morphing\u2014ultimately, the exhibition harnesses the very idea of walking as a form of cultural emancipation and resistance. I am not staying put; I won\u2019t sit down. Walking, in all its forms, lies at the core of a sheer necessity to endlessly search and find. Every work asks us to consider both the beauty and the burden of the past while challenging us to reflect on how personal and collective histories are represented, erased, handed down, and refashioned. An outstandingly apt closing scene for an epic exhibition that reaches well beyond the remit of a retrospective. Keep Walking<\/em> is, in and of itself, a profound and powerful artistic statement that enhances the political resonance of each work into a moving and urgent organic whole.<\/p>\n\n\n![\"Mark-Bradford\"](\"https:\/\/esse.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/11\/web_nov_Aloi_Mark-Bradfort-scaled.jpg\")
I Don’t Know What I Am<\/em>, installation view,
Hamburger Bahnhof, Berlin, 2024.
Photo: Nationalgalerie-Staatliche Museen zu Berlin \/
Jacopo La Forgia, courtesy of the artist and Hauser & Wirth<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n![\"Mark-Bradford\"](\"https:\/\/esse.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/11\/web_nov_Aloi_Mark-Bradford_LaForgia_JPEG_HIGHRES_0015-scaled.jpg\")
Manifest Destiny<\/em>, 2023, installation view,
Hamburger Bahnhof, Berlin, 2024.
Photo: Nationalgalerie-Staatliche Museen zu Berlin \/
Jacopo La Forgia, courtesy of the artist and Hauser & Wirth<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n![\"Mark-Bradford\"](\"https:\/\/esse.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/11\/web_nov_Aloi_Mark-Bradford_LaForgia_JPEG_HIGHRES_0013-scaled.jpg\")
Deimos<\/em>, 2015, installation view,
Hamburger Bahnhof, Berlin, 2024.
Photo: Nationalgalerie-Staatliche Museen zu Berlin \/
Jacopo La Forgia, courtesy of the artist and Hauser & Wirth<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n![\"Mark-Bradford\"](\"https:\/\/esse.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/11\/web_nov_Aloi_Mark-Bradford_LaForgia_JPEG_HIGHRES_0019-scaled.jpg\")
(from left to right) Neither Love Nor Hate<\/em>, 2024; Death Drop<\/em>, 2023; The Betrayal of a Belief<\/em>, 2024, installations view, Hamburger Bahnhof, Berlin, 2024.
Photo: Nationalgalerie-Staatliche Museen zu Berlin \/
Jacopo La Forgia, courtesy of the artist and Hauser & Wirth<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n![\"Mark-Bradford\"](\"https:\/\/esse.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/11\/web_nov_Aloi_Mark-Bradford_LaForgia_JPEG_HIGHRES_0042-scaled.jpg\")
Float<\/em>, 2019, installation view, Hamburger Bahnhof, Berlin, 2024.
Photo: Nationalgalerie-Staatliche Museen zu Berlin \/
Jacopo La Forgia, courtesy of the artist and Hauser & Wirth<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n![\"Mark-Bradford\"](\"https:\/\/esse.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/11\/web_nov_Aloi_Mark-Bradford_Niagara_still-scaled.jpg\")
Niagara<\/em>, video still, 2005.
Photo: courtesy of the artist, K\u00fcnstler, and Hauser & Wirth<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n