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Artworks
Brad Kahlhamer
Native American ancestry, b. 1956, Tucson, AZ
Lives and works in New York, NY and Mesa, AZ
Working across a range of media that includes sculpture, drawing, painting, performance, and music, Brad Kahlhamer explores what he refers to as the “third place”—a meeting point of two opposing personal histories. His practice draws on his own tripartite identity, navigating his Native American heritage, adoptive German-American family, and adult life in New York City’s Lower East Side.
Kahlhamer’s work references hallmarks of 20th century abstract painting, such as German Expressionism, while incorporating a highly personal iconography informed by his early career as a comic book illustrator, Native American ledger drawings and winter counts, and the artistic milieu of downtown Manhattan. While referencing Native American history and culture, his work explores his own displaced identity and straddles notions of authenticity and representation within the discourse of Native American art.
Kahlhamer has exhibited extensively in the United States and Europe, including recent solo exhibitions include the Bates College Museum of Art, Lewiston, ME (2024); Tucson Museum of Art, AZ (2022); and Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art, Phoenix, AZ (2022); Plains Art Museum, Fargo, ND (2020) and Minnesota Museum of American Art, St Paul, MN (2019). His work has additionally been featured in exhibitions at the Brooklyn Museum, New York, NY; Denver Art Museum, CO; Minneapolis Institute of Art, MN; Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid, Spain; Metropolitan Museum of Art; New York, NY; Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, CA; San Jose Museum of Art, CA; Seattle Art Museum, WA; Thyssen-Bornemisza Art Contemporary, Vienna, Austria; and Yorkshire Sculpture Park, UK, among many others.
He is a recipient of the Joan Mitchell Award (2006) and Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation Biennial Award (2001), as well as residencies at the Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts, Omaha, NE; Citivella Ranieri, Umbertide, Italy; Headlands Center for the Arts, Sausalito, CA; Rauschenberg Foundation; and TBA21. Kahlhamer’s work is held in such institutional collections as the Denver Art Museum, CO; Deutsche Bank Collection, Berlin, Germany; Minneapolis Institute of Art, MN; Seattle Art Museum, WA; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, CA;Thyssen-Bornemisza Art Contemporary, Vienna, Austria; TIA Collection Santa Fe, NM; Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, MN; and Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY.
Photo by Doug Miles, courtesy the artist
