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Brad Melamed

@bradmelamed

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A pic of me by @andrea.evans37051at @mckenzie_fine_art. I’m honored to be part of Repetition and Seriality. This is the final week. One of the many things I love about this show is how each artist uniquely uses repetition and seriality to amplify “same and different.” There’s a fine tuning in that paradox. Thanks to the gallery and to all who have come by.

Tues - Friday 11 to 6, until Aug 21st

Repetition and Seriality

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@zarate_p by @bradmelamed

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a month ago

Yesterday afternoon, after coffee with a visiting friend, I ducked into The Waiting Room at 57W57 Arts, one of their small gallery spaces inside an office building on 42nd Street, right across from the lions at the main New York Public Library, and walked straight into a field of yellow.

The show is my friend Brad Melamed’s (still) Curious (yellow). Every work follows the same rule set: nine small paper units, a two inch house painter brush, only black, white, and yellow. Each stroke moves from black to yellow to white on pale yellow and gray, and every mark has to run off the edge or hide under another stroke. Pattern, repetition, gesture, process, the grid, all locked in, then gently messed with by a human hand.

On the wall it feels anything but mechanical. The paintings hum with small imperfections, a seventies palette of tarry yellow, off white, and near black, the taped seams between panels reminding you that every little piece matters as much as the whole.

Brad has been part of the New York art world since the early eighties, thinking about systems, rules, and everyday materials. I talked with him and his artist wife, Andrea Evans, and somehow birding came up, which felt right in a room full of repeated units that behave a bit like a flock. Gilbert, the young Dutch gallery receptionist I know joined us, and the conversation slid from Sol LeWitt to politics, American racism, and Sinterklaas.

The show is at 57W57 Arts, 501 Fifth Avenue, Suite 701, in The Waiting Room space across from the main library. (still) Curious (yellow) is on view from October 26 through December 12, 2025, Friday 2:30 to 6:30 and Saturday and Sunday 1:30 to 4:30. @bradmelamed @andrea.evans.37051 @57w57arts taken in 57W57 Arts by @bradmelamed

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a year ago

Third Mind Drawing #4 (triptych) 2026
each page: 12” x 9”
color pencil, oil crayon, turpenoid on paper

The first three drawings are separate parts of a triptych shown in the fourth image. In this series it’s been exciting to discover how abstraction and pattern can open a door to another abstraction/pattern. A kind infinity. Is this how matter organizes itself on sub-atomic levels? If so how would that change our understanding of our physical being? by @bradmelamed

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10 hours ago

x2 for the Havest Moon (Shine On)

The first pic is an homage to Max Ernst. by @bradmelamed

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2 days ago

x3 for Thursday

1 Equinox - for Barnett Newnan

2 Red Carpet

3 Let It Rain by @bradmelamed

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4 days ago

All State Builders #10 - Jingle-Jangle
acrylic on paper
twelve panels, each panel,14” x 11”
total size: 63.5” x 39”

2-7 panels 7-12 by @bradmelamed

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7 days ago

Lindsay Walt - The Measure of Things
Helm Contemporary, thru October 3rd

Artist talk yesterday with artists Lindsay Walt and Suzanne Unrein. The inspiring talk began with a quote from Camus and ending with a quote from Sonny Rollins. Can’t get much better than that. This body of Lindsay’s work is in part inspired by her routine crossings of lower Manhattan bridges on her way to her studio. There’s a play between space, edge, atmosphere, light (amazing use of gradation) and structure. Morris Louis and the precisionists Charles Demuth and Charles Sheeler come to mind. There’s a sense of a meta-transport, the movement from here to there, there to here. A multi-dimensional in-between with a vista.

@lindsaywalt_studiio
@suzanneureinartist
@helmcontemporary by @bradmelamed

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8 days ago

x6 panels from All State Builders #10 - Jingle/Jangle
acrylic on paper
each panel,14” x 11”
total size: 63.5” x 39”

1-6 panels by @bradmelamed

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9 days ago

Third Mind Drawing #3 (triptych) 2026
each page: 12” x 9”
color pencil, oil crayon, turpenoid on paper

It’s taken a few posts to realize that I wanted to convey more clearly how these three drawings work together as a triptych. The left and center drawings mirror each other in some way. The drawing on the right is a combination of both drawings turned vertically. I like the idea that somehow the whole thing is the one abstraction. by @bradmelamed

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11 days ago

x3 for Wednesday

1 Here’s the Part Nobody Talks About - for Robert Motherwell

2 Treasure Map

3 Enthusiastic Curb by @bradmelamed

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14 days ago

Third Mind Drawing #1 (triptych)
each page: 12” x 9”
color pencil, oil crayon, turpenoid on paper

These drawings began as a summer project. Looks like they'll be a fall project too. They’re demanding more attention. Best to listen...returning to them to heighten the color, texture and definition. I enjoy the refining stage…fewer decisions and more focus on handling the materials. I’m still aiming for twenty drawings to match a suite of twenty small paintings (wip) that are the “parents,” to these drawings. by @bradmelamed

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16 days ago

x3 for 9/11, from Einstein’s Constant 2002-2004
markers on paper
66” x 51”

2,4,6 details

Einstein’s Constant is a series created after 9/11 and my Mom’s passing five days before. The series consists of 21 large drawings made of 36 individual letter size pages. Notions about crucifixion/resurrection/transformation, universal/maternal and personal/collective are woven into the work.

Back in 2002 I had been working with plaids for about six years. It began after a brief freelance stint doing display/prop inventory at Ralph Lauren. I was uncomfortable there but I got some ideas. At their headquarters on Madison Avenue I saw tartan everywhere, including the walls. To my mind the repeating overlaps are like time/space intersections. I was also looking at patterns in Renaissance art, depictions of Mary draped in blue, and the great diversity that is NYC. Looking back, late Rothko, Donald Judd, Sherrie Levine, Felix Gonzalez-Torres and Byron Kim come to mind. I also was reading Einstein’s unproven theory of a unified field (hope I got that right), hence the title.

For this 25th anniversary of 9/11:
We are infinite and equal expressions of the same cosmic stuff: light particles, waves and fields. Our physicality is cosmically unified. Not us/ them. One. How to not forget that… then build structures for a world reality based on that truth.

Dedicating this series to my parents, Dorothy B. and William R. Melamed. by @bradmelamed

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18 days ago