Dove Bradshaw

Contingency

				Contingency, 1985
				Contingency Pour, 1991 Photographed: January 1992 and August 1993
				Contingency, 1992
				Contingency, 1994
				Contingency, 1996
				Without Title, 1996
				Contingency, 1989
				Contingency Pour, 1994
				Contingency Pour, 1994 - 1996
				Contingency Pour, 1995
				Contingency Jet, 2007
				Contingency Jet, 2007
				Contingency Pour I [October], 2006
				Contingency Pour II [October], 2006
				Contingency [February], 1993
				Contingency [book], Contingency Pour II, [October], Björn Ressle Gallery, New York, 2007
				Contingency Exhibition Björn Ressle Gallery, New York, 2007

The artist has written about this work in: Contingency Works: 1984-2011

The work of Dove Bradshaw works with our changing conceptions of time and space which we have assumed for a long time are two different things. She’s involved, as we are in our lives, because of art, with an almost scientific procedure, so that she can experiment in such a way as to prove something. And she can subject us to the results of her experiments which can open us to the life we are living…

It’s quite amazing. The fact that [her work] changes requires a change for me; it requires a change of attitude. If I so to speak change with it, then I can change with the world that I’m living in, which is doing the same thing.

We’re confronting now it seems to me in the very full way that her work is itself working—the identity, not the separateness, but the identity of time and space.

…Dove has introduced time into space, and our living is in that confusion.

The things that happen in her work are, so to speak, full of not her determination but its determination, such as chemical change, or gravity. She used the word event: whereas she’s interested in an undefined freedom of action for the chemistry. Of not doing anything.

John Cage Dove Bradshaw, Works 1969-1993, Sandra Gering Gallery, New York, 1993

Bradshaw began making what she calls Contingency works in 1984…Over the next few years they developed in several directions. The most basic form is silver-leafed paper or canvas on to which a substance called liver of sulfur is poured or brushed. Liver of sulfur is a 17th century term which is still used (the modern form is sulfurated potash)….When this agent is applied to silver, the surface becomes unstable, changing in various ways in response to ambient humidity and heat. In Contingency Paintings Bradshaw brushes the whole surface with liver of sulfur, in Contingency Pours she pours it and lets it spread and pool as gravity dictates. Upon contact the silver turns a brilliant gold, then gets turquoise hues in a pitted or streaked form, then deep blue, then a greenish color, and eventually an iridized black. The initial chemical reaction is most noticeable, but it keeps going at a slower rate thereafter, and never stops. The effect is indeterminate in the sense that the result is unpredictable and often surprising. …

The desire for mastery that was basic to Modernism yields to an acceptance of the unexpected…The whole vast network of phenomena is seen as arising not from essences (or fixed identities) but from temporary contingencies that are always in a state of flux and therefore are without identity or essence or inner truth; everything, in other words, is both ephemeral and indeterminate. As Aristotle remarked in the Metaphysics, “Nothing is true of what is changing.”

Thomas McEvilley Dove Bradshaw, Nature, Change, and Indeterminacy, Batty, LLC, West New York, NJ, 2003

Dove Bradshaw’s work exists at the interstices of time, magic, alchemy, and natural materials...Three large paintings in the show revealed how dramatically this acid can create expressive landscapes. Contingency Pour takes Pollock’s drip painting tech-nique to the next level; the liver of sulfur not only makes marks on the silver, it also continues to interact.

Dove Bradshaw’s...Contingency Jets, made of silver, liver of sulfur, and beeswax applied to paper, are both compelling abstracts, rich in detail. But Bradshaw, a major innovator herself in artistic techniques for the past thirty-five years, is not content merely to present intriguing forms that repay even microscopic examination. No; we are also witnessing a chemical reaction in flagrante, a progressive devouring of the silver by the sulfur, leaving a residue of flakey white micro-crystals that form into tiny knobs. The artwork is changing, albeit very slowly, before our eyes, altering its shape, its composition, its texture (does it have an expiration date?) So Bradshaw has framed a slow dynamism, which for now looks like the silhouette of a water bear (tardigrade). It’s intriguing looking work, backed by an exciting concept.

Dove Bradshaw…has a distinct individual voice…most of the works here are unfinished, and never will be finished. She likes to set a work in motion, then put it out into the world to continue under its own steam. Contingency I-V for instance, consists of five silver panels, treated with liver of sulfur...As the various substances react with each other and with the air, with the water in the air, and with the moisture in the breath of the spectators-patches, blotches, lines and dots bloom and scab across the surface of the metal.