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56 PERMANENT WAVES A NEW SHOW AT THE MODERN ART MUSEUM OF FORT WORTH SHOWCASES MARK BRADFORD'S EARLY YEARS, WHEN INSPIRATION WAS FOUND AMONG THE DYE BOTTLES AND END PAPERS OF HIS MOTHER'S BEAUTY SHOP. JP MORGAN CHASE COLLECTION. © MARK BRADFORD BY BILLY FONG. PORTRAIT JOSHUA WHITE. A rtist Mark Bradford began his career w o r k i n g w i t h traditional materials, but he found his voice when he picked up small swatches of paper from the floor of a hair salon and incorporated them into his art. Almost three dozen of these works make up the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth exhibition "Mark Bradford: End Papers." It's a chance to see the improvisational beginnings of an artist who has become an art-world phenomenon. The works, often monumental in scale, combine painting and collage employing the translucent paper squares used by African- American salons to protect hair during the permanent-wave process. This, Bradford knows from experience: He was raised in South Los Angeles, where he trained to be a hairdresser in his mother's salon and worked with the papers on a daily basis. He was nearly 30 when he began studying at the California Institute of the Arts and earned an MFA in 1997. Fast forward to 2009, when he won a MacArthur Genius Grant and saw his works fetch millions from eager collectors such as Tina Knowles, Beyoncé's mother, who was at the exhibit's opening and interviewed Bradford at the Modern the night before. Works in the exhibit are mostly from private collections, and are immediately compelling, the papers forming irregular grids and creating unexpected textures and luminosity. Some, such as a large golden canvas 43G Spring Honey, 2001, seem to be layered with paint, but the pigment is actually hair dye — hence, the name of the work — another material Bradford worked into his early pieces. The half- used bottles were available and free, but the saturation and depth the dyes created permanently shaped his sensibility as an artist. "I hope people will see this show in a historical context," says the exhibit's curator, Michael Auping, former chief curator of the Modern. "American art has always been about materials, whether it be Richard Serra's Cor Ten steel or Donald Judd's Plexi boxes. Bradford's end papers are a very interesting and nuanced addition to this material inventory." Auping notes that for 20 years, Bradford has layered his work with all kinds of paper, including "merchant posters and ads directed at low-income neighborhoods around his studio in South Central Los Angeles" promoting gun sales, loans, and pawn shops. For this exhibition, however, the curator wanted to pay homage to a particular element of Bradford's roots — the beauty salon — and to "put a magnifying glass on how a young artist can move from unique, even humble circumstances into the realm of compelling abstract art." Before the opening, we asked Bradford — who was jetting about Europe at the time — about his art and his experience in hair salons. You made a new work for this exhibition. It's a site-specific end-paper piece Still Pressin, a re-envisioning of a work I created in 2002. The title of that original piece was Pressin Agnes, which is a reference to the artist Agnes Martin, who was a great inspiration to me, and it suggests the historical art movements and practices I was most engaged with at that time. The new work is a large piece made of transparent end papers applied directly to the wall. Still Pressin will be installed across from Thelxiepeia, a work that I first exhibited at the Venice Biennale in 2017 when I represented the United States, and it's named after one of the sirens of ancient Greek mythology. I've always been fascinated by the connections that exist between hair and self-fashioning, and how these are analogs for the creative act of art making and the construction of meaning and identity. Looking back on your years as a hairdresser: Any trends that seem unfortunate or funny? At the time, the Jheri curl seemed like a good idea, but in looking back, it was a greasy, hot mess. Do you still occasionally cut hair? If so, how can I score an appointment? Girl, please. "Mark Bradford: End Papers," through August 9, at the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, themodern.org. Mark Bradford's Eve, 2001