Old school leanings with contemporary bling, Harms' work addresses the manner in which we perceive painting. Playing with the ideas of surface, the paintings in his newest series explore aluminum as the support for his work. Aware, however, of how the aluminum surface can become slick and cold, Harms often interrupts his surface with the insertion of diamonds and machine punched holes. Playing on the idea of vectors and the construction of movement, these paintings question the manner in which paintings are defined and understood.

Harms’ practice has always utilized painting as a tool with which to address contemporary experience. Though not utilizing it, these new paintings borrow heavily from the tropes of digital reproduction.Each mark is hand applied one-by-one accumulating into the thousands. Although appearing close to the notion of technical perfection, the paintings always fall short in that they subtly betray the human hand in their production. By manually striving for the digital notion of perfection without achieving it, the paintings turn the lens onto what they set out to emulate.

Harms will be included in the upcoming Carte Blanche book which will focus on young painters in Canada.

Born in 1971, Winnipeg, Manitoba, Bradley Harms received his Bachelor of Fine Arts from the University of Calgary in 1996 and his Masters of Fine Arts from the prestigious School of the Art Institute of Chicago. His work has been exhibited through North America and Europe. His work can be found in many international public collections such as the Canada Council's Artbank (Ottawa, ON), Alberta Foundation for the Arts (Edmonton, AB), the Nickle Arts Museum (Calgary, AB), University of Western Sydney (Sydney, Australia) and Tama Art University (Tokyo, Japan).