Spotlight: Bradley Hart
February 17, 2022
From bubble wrap to high Artworks >
Meet Bradley Hart!
Bubble wrap, which was invented in 1957 as a type of three-dimensional wall covering, is now found inside the majority of packages. Most people think of bubble wrap as a cushioned packaging material or something inexplicably satisfying to pop; however, this is not the case for artist Bradley Hart.
Bradley Hart in his studio. Courtesy of the artist.
Bradley Hart is a Canadian contemporary artist based in New York. Hart’s technique is to fill individual syringes with paint and then spend nearly a month filling up each air pockets of the bubble wrap with his syringes to create a massive artwork. When viewed up close, they appear to be a smattering of paint bubbles, but when viewed from a distance, all the tiny dots combine to form a masterpiece.
According to the artist, his inspiration for transforming packing material into art came from an encounter he had with overly protective museum security guards and a leftover roll of bubble wrap from his first solo show in New York.
Hart assigns a color code to each bubble, which corresponds to a paint-loaded syringe, using software he co-created with a friend. The artist then injects acrylic paint into each bubble wrap cell, resulting in pixelated hyperrealist recreations of the selected images.
Hart spends approximately 150 hours on average to complete each Injection work.
The reverse side of Hart’s canvases is just as interesting as the front. Hart overflows his bubbles with a calculated amount of paint while injecting so that the excess paint drips down the flat side of the bubble wrap. When the drips dry, they fuse and are removed from the plastic. This additional layer became one of his new series, titled Impression, which is a natural byproduct of the previous Injection work but stands alone as a body of work on its own.
Injection – Berlin Wall (Portion), 2014, Acrylic on Wood, 200 x 140 cm
Impression – Nude, (portion), 2013, Acrylic on Wood, 165 x 210 cm
Bradley Hart making of Bubble by Bubble. Courtesy of Localish
