Brad Tucker draws from the language of street
signs and the craft of sign-making. “Sandwich” (2000) is made up of cast
skateboards and foam rubber. The work refers to color-field painting and early modernist
abstraction, yet its homemade, low-tech quality suggests the "do-it-yourself"
attitude of the computer desktop publisher. The phonetic and poetic qualities of signage
and Tucker's use of the California vernacular contribute to his work. Tucker (b. 1965,
California) lives and works in Texas.
A solo exhibition has been organized by the Angstrom Gallery, Dallas, TX (2000), and his
work has been featured in group exhibitions like "Core Show", Glassell School of
Art, Museum of Fine Arts, Houston (2000), and "Thrifting", Lombard Freid-Fine
Art, New York (2000), among others.
Skateboards are a big part of my aesthetic. I used to go to skateboard parks in
California, which informed my interest in color - the color of skateboard wheels, the
kinds of graphics used. Skateboarding always involved an existential self-invention. Here
you are - your board and the street, which you could reinvent for your own fluid action
philosophy. You’re not using the street or the sidewalk for its intended purpose -
that is, for driving, walking, or transporting yourself form one place to the next.
You’re using it for your own unique purpose, as a site of possibility and recreation.
I include skateboards in my work as metaphors for transportation - of things and ideas.
Just as you might use a skateboard to take out the trash, I might use it to move signs
around.
I was always interested in the “Yellow Pages” kind of aesthetic - imagery
that’s simple and abstract, but at the same time symbolic of other things. Signs are
very much like that - they’re both symbolic and denotative. The sign shop [I worked
in] was not up to date. They had this old industrial technology. ... The industry has
gotten away from making the three dimensional electric signs - computer graphics and vinyl
letters have taken over. ....My fascination in signs is more poetic ... I’m
interested in Color-Field painting - it absorbs you all at once.
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