Brad Howe: A Dance of Atoms

This expansive volume follows key themes that Brad Howe has consistently explored throughout his career. His imagery plays off juxtapositions, contradictions, and coincidences. In this book, a woven tapestry emerges of Howe's work over time, reflecting ever-present spatial questions and thematic explorations.

Brad Howe, born 1959 in Riverside, California, started his career in Brazil, after studying history in São Paulo. Recognized as a leading contemporary California artist and sculptor, he is best known for his large-scale public and private works, employing rigid materials like stainless steel and aluminium, animated by his vibrant colour and challenging structural solutions. Howe's exuberant and pervasive work is grounded in a unique, thought-provoking vision and philosophy.

From the start, Howe has always taken his calling as an abstract artist, seeking poetry and unpredictable formulations. The interplay of his lyrical shapes and use of colour are his signature characteristics. Sometimes his mood is vibrant and joyful with references to Calder, Miró, and Frank Stella, then shifting to deeper explorations more subtle and restrained, with influences pointing to Brancusi, Arp, David Smith, or Ellsworth Kelly. The resulting three-dimensional works are a dance of atoms, a romance between shapes, negative space and their playful shadows.

The book is to be experienced as a symphonic arrangement of multiple voices. Sections, like instruments, come together in shared time, each instrumental group playing different narratives, creating a complex journey of rhythms and textures, functioning as a collective, contingent on each other, at times harmonious and resonant, at times enigmatic and dissonant.