Brad Howe
“If we are to engage in the project of self-edification, the evolution of self, the enterprise is tied to our imagination. As Richard Rorty indicates, imagination is bound by our vocabulary, and it is in the growth of vocabulary we should focus. Vocabulary is tied to experience, and it is in energized moments of exposure to strangeness that our vocabulary expands. Encountering strangeness stretches and expands our self-image and seeds the rich potential for our collective conversations.” - Brad Howe
Brad Howe began his career in Brazil after studying history at the University of Sao Paulo. His work presents the influence of inquiry into the aesthetics of various cultures and distinct movements in the continuum of art history. His work continues to connect with international communities, exhibiting and completing site-specific commissions both in the US and abroad. Known for his sculpture practice, Howe’s focus also includes the representation of objects through diverse means, including photography.
Biography
For Los Angeles-based sculptor Brad Howe (b. 1959, Riverside, CA), the practice of art making is inextricably tied to a conception of the world as a kind of language for which experience is tasked with finding the words. The function of art, as Howe conceives it, is to expand one's vocabulary such that the contours of life can become increasingly comprehensible and the meaning that lies latent in the peripheries of experience can be articulated and more carefully described.
Much like the open-ended, intuitive approach he takes in his work, Howe's path to becoming an artist was not direct but circuitous. Having studied Literature and International Relations at Stanford, Howe traveled to Brazil to attend the University of São Paulo with the intention of pursuing a career in diplomacy. Instead, he fell in with a group of architecture students whose optimism in the ability of design to address the important problems of modern life inspired Howe to start experimenting with form, color, and space. Without any formal artistic training and only a book of Calder's work as a reference, Howe began cutting pieces of wire 3and scrap metal, arranging them into kinetic mobiles that took after Calder but with a sense of color and shape inflected by the visual culture of Brazil in the 80s, with its penchant for high chroma, strong contrasts, and dynamic movement.
Since returning to the U.S., Howe has established a reputation for working in a variety of sculptural formats, producing painting-like wall works, free standing sculptures, and expansive public installations, in addition to the kinetics for which he first became known. Over the past 40 years, Howe’s practice has evolved through a sustained negotiation of opposing forces, balancing the extremes of color and mass to create vibrantly clashing metal forms that rise in the air with a deceptive weightlessness, sometimes hovering like technicolor mirages.
Identifying as a gardener, Howe's sculptures are the result of patient observation and a dogged devotion to the insights of intuition, imagination, and memory. Using the formal language of classical modernism and its mid 20th century West Coast offshoots (e.g. Minimalism, Light & Space, Pop, and Post-Pop), Howe has developed a means for translating the ever fleeting experience of contemporary life into striking objects that straddle the line between physical presence and graphic exuberance.
Brad Howe's work has been exhibited internationally across North and South America, Europe, and Asia, and can be found in public and private collections worldwide.
Born
1959 Riverside, CA.
Education
Stanford University, Stanford, Palo Alto, CA.
University of Sao Paulo, Sao Paulo, Brazil.
Selected Group Exhibitions
2020 Trooping the Colours, Biberach, Germany
2019 Art Palm Springs, Caldwell Snyder Gallery, Palm Springs, CA
Art Market San Francisco, Caldwell Snyder Gallery
SCOPE Miami, Caldwell Snyder Gallery
2018 35th Anniversary Show, Caldwell Snyder Gallery, San Francisco
Art Market Hamptons, Caldwell Snyder Gallery, NY, NY
LA Art Show, Caldwell Snyder Gallery, Los Angeles, CA
Art Market San Francisco, Caldwell Snyder Gallery, SF, CA.
Selected Solo Exhibitions
2022 Recent Sculptures, Caldwell Snyder Gallery, Montecito, CA.
2019 Wishful Thinking, Caldwell Snyder Gallery, St. Helena, CA.
2017 Galerie Uli Land, Biberach, Germany.
2016 Pacific Design Center, West Hollywood, CA.
Gallery Jeon, Daegu, South Korea.
Galerie Uli Lang, Biberach, Germany.
2015 Caldwell Snyder Gallery, San Francisco, CA.
CMay Gallery, Seoul, South Korea.
2014 Museum of Art & History, Lancaster, CA.
The Frostig Collection, Santa Monica, CA.
Selected Public & Corporate Collections
Allergan Corporation, Irvine, CA • Arario Industries, Cheon-Shi, South Korea • Bachem California Inc., Torrance, CA • Baxter Healthcare Corporation, Irvine, CA • Beechcraft Corporation, Van Nuys, CA
Birtcher Corporation, Irvine, CA • Boehringer Ingelheim, Biberach, Germany • Boehringer Ingelheim, CT • California Spine Center, Thousand Oaks, CA • Canon Corporation, Irvine, CA • Carl Bean AIDS Center, Los Angeles, CA • Cedars-Sinai Hospital, Los Angeles, CA •
Chandler Properties, Los Angeles, CA • City of Hope, Duarte, CA •
City of Montebello, Transportation Building, Montebello, CA • City of Santa Fe Springs, CA • Colegio Nacional de Educacion Profesional TecnicaL Administrative Campus, Toluca, Mexico • Concord Property Corporation, San Antonio, TX • Duncan Aviation, Lincoln, NE • Edificio Siglum, SARE Corporation, Mexico City, Mexico • Edison International, Rosemead, CA • Eisenhower Medical Center, Rancho Mirage, CA • Equity Office, Atlanta, GA • Georgia International Convention Center • Gershwin Hotel, New York City, NY • Hilton Caribe, San Juan, Puerto Rico • Intuit, Reno, NV • Katell Properties, Los Angeles, CA • Kaiser Permanente, Baldwin Park, CA • Kitakyushu City International Center, Kitakyushu, Japan • Kimball International, Inc., Los Angeles, CA • Kreissparkasse, Biberach, Germany • La Fundidora, Centro Cultural, Monterrey, NL, Mexico • Landesbank Baden-Wurttemberg, Stuttgart, Germany • Lockton Insurance, Los Angeles, CA • Lord Baltimore Properties, Empire Towers III, Ontario, CA • Los Angeles Retarded Citizen’s Foundation, Saugus, CA • Loyola Law School, Los Angeles, CA • Medix Mihagino, Kitakyushu, Japan • Mercure Hotel, Sao Paulo, Brazil • M.G.M. Grand Airlines, JFK Airport, NY • Ministry of Industry and Trade Building, Mexico City, Mexico • M.I.T., Cambridge, MA • Murrel Company, Newport Beach, CA • Neiman Marcus, Dallas, TX • Nobe Telecommunications Corporation, Miami, FL • Overton Moore and Associates Inc. Los Angeles, CA • Pacific Medical Buildings, San Diego, CA • Pasadena Museum of California Art, Pasadena, CA • Raleigh Durham Airport, Raleigh, NC • Royal Host, International Forum Building, Tokyo, Japan • Saks Fifth Avenue, USA • Samsung Corporation, Seoul, South Korea • Sand Hill Property Company, Sunnyvale, CA • SAS Software Inc. Cary, NC • Secretary of Commerce, Mexico City, Mexico • Straub Autovermietung Hertz, Biberach, Germany • The Diplomat Hotel, Hollywood, FL • The Trenton Group, Los Angeles, CA • UCLA, Medical Center, Los Angeles, CA • UCLA, Anderson School of Business, Los Angeles, CA
Press
PRESS
Selected Artworks
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Born
1959 Riverside, CA.
Education
Stanford University, Stanford, Palo Alto, CA.
University of Sao Paulo, Sao Paulo, Brazil.
Selected Group Exhibitions
2020 Trooping the Colours, Biberach, Germany
2019 Art Palm Springs, Caldwell Snyder Gallery, Palm Springs, CA
Art Market San Francisco, Caldwell Snyder Gallery
SCOPE Miami, Caldwell Snyder Gallery
2018 35th Anniversary Show, Caldwell Snyder Gallery, San Francisco
Art Market Hamptons, Caldwell Snyder Gallery, NY, NY
LA Art Show, Caldwell Snyder Gallery, Los Angeles, CA
Art Market San Francisco, Caldwell Snyder Gallery, SF, CA.
Selected Solo Exhibitions
2022 Recent Sculptures, Caldwell Snyder Gallery, Montecito, CA.
2019 Wishful Thinking, Caldwell Snyder Gallery, St. Helena, CA.
2017 Galerie Uli Land, Biberach, Germany.
2016 Pacific Design Center, West Hollywood, CA.
Gallery Jeon, Daegu, South Korea.
Galerie Uli Lang, Biberach, Germany.
2015 Caldwell Snyder Gallery, San Francisco, CA.
CMay Gallery, Seoul, South Korea.
2014 Museum of Art & History, Lancaster, CA.
The Frostig Collection, Santa Monica, CA.
Selected Public & Corporate Collections
Allergan Corporation, Irvine, CA • Arario Industries, Cheon-Shi, South Korea • Bachem California Inc., Torrance, CA • Baxter Healthcare Corporation, Irvine, CA • Beechcraft Corporation, Van Nuys, CA
Birtcher Corporation, Irvine, CA • Boehringer Ingelheim, Biberach, Germany • Boehringer Ingelheim, CT • California Spine Center, Thousand Oaks, CA • Canon Corporation, Irvine, CA • Carl Bean AIDS Center, Los Angeles, CA • Cedars-Sinai Hospital, Los Angeles, CA •
Chandler Properties, Los Angeles, CA • City of Hope, Duarte, CA •
City of Montebello, Transportation Building, Montebello, CA • City of Santa Fe Springs, CA • Colegio Nacional de Educacion Profesional TecnicaL Administrative Campus, Toluca, Mexico • Concord Property Corporation, San Antonio, TX • Duncan Aviation, Lincoln, NE • Edificio Siglum, SARE Corporation, Mexico City, Mexico • Edison International, Rosemead, CA • Eisenhower Medical Center, Rancho Mirage, CA • Equity Office, Atlanta, GA • Georgia International Convention Center • Gershwin Hotel, New York City, NY • Hilton Caribe, San Juan, Puerto Rico • Intuit, Reno, NV • Katell Properties, Los Angeles, CA • Kaiser Permanente, Baldwin Park, CA • Kitakyushu City International Center, Kitakyushu, Japan • Kimball International, Inc., Los Angeles, CA • Kreissparkasse, Biberach, Germany • La Fundidora, Centro Cultural, Monterrey, NL, Mexico • Landesbank Baden-Wurttemberg, Stuttgart, Germany • Lockton Insurance, Los Angeles, CA • Lord Baltimore Properties, Empire Towers III, Ontario, CA • Los Angeles Retarded Citizen’s Foundation, Saugus, CA • Loyola Law School, Los Angeles, CA • Medix Mihagino, Kitakyushu, Japan • Mercure Hotel, Sao Paulo, Brazil • M.G.M. Grand Airlines, JFK Airport, NY • Ministry of Industry and Trade Building, Mexico City, Mexico • M.I.T., Cambridge, MA • Murrel Company, Newport Beach, CA • Neiman Marcus, Dallas, TX • Nobe Telecommunications Corporation, Miami, FL • Overton Moore and Associates Inc. Los Angeles, CA • Pacific Medical Buildings, San Diego, CA • Pasadena Museum of California Art, Pasadena, CA • Raleigh Durham Airport, Raleigh, NC • Royal Host, International Forum Building, Tokyo, Japan • Saks Fifth Avenue, USA • Samsung Corporation, Seoul, South Korea • Sand Hill Property Company, Sunnyvale, CA • SAS Software Inc. Cary, NC • Secretary of Commerce, Mexico City, Mexico • Straub Autovermietung Hertz, Biberach, Germany • The Diplomat Hotel, Hollywood, FL • The Trenton Group, Los Angeles, CA • UCLA, Medical Center, Los Angeles, CA • UCLA, Anderson School of Business, Los Angeles, CA
For Los Angeles-based sculptor Brad Howe (b. 1959, Riverside, CA), the practice of art making is inextricably tied to a conception of the world as a kind of language for which experience is tasked with finding the words. The function of art, as Howe conceives it, is to expand one's vocabulary such that the contours of life can become increasingly comprehensible and the meaning that lies latent in the peripheries of experience can be articulated and more carefully described.
Much like the open-ended, intuitive approach he takes in his work, Howe's path to becoming an artist was not direct but circuitous. Having studied Literature and International Relations at Stanford, Howe traveled to Brazil to attend the University of São Paulo with the intention of pursuing a career in diplomacy. Instead, he fell in with a group of architecture students whose optimism in the ability of design to address the important problems of modern life inspired Howe to start experimenting with form, color, and space. Without any formal artistic training and only a book of Calder's work as a reference, Howe began cutting pieces of wire 3and scrap metal, arranging them into kinetic mobiles that took after Calder but with a sense of color and shape inflected by the visual culture of Brazil in the 80s, with its penchant for high chroma, strong contrasts, and dynamic movement.
Since returning to the U.S., Howe has established a reputation for working in a variety of sculptural formats, producing painting-like wall works, free standing sculptures, and expansive public installations, in addition to the kinetics for which he first became known. Over the past 40 years, Howe’s practice has evolved through a sustained negotiation of opposing forces, balancing the extremes of color and mass to create vibrantly clashing metal forms that rise in the air with a deceptive weightlessness, sometimes hovering like technicolor mirages.
Identifying as a gardener, Howe's sculptures are the result of patient observation and a dogged devotion to the insights of intuition, imagination, and memory. Using the formal language of classical modernism and its mid 20th century West Coast offshoots (e.g. Minimalism, Light & Space, Pop, and Post-Pop), Howe has developed a means for translating the ever fleeting experience of contemporary life into striking objects that straddle the line between physical presence and graphic exuberance.
Brad Howe's work has been exhibited internationally across North and South America, Europe, and Asia, and can be found in public and private collections worldwide.
Biography
Press
“If we are to engage in the project of self-edification, the evolution of self, the enterprise is tied to our imagination. As Richard Rorty indicates, imagination is bound by our vocabulary, and it is in the growth of vocabulary we should focus. Vocabulary is tied to experience, and it is in energized moments of exposure to strangeness that our vocabulary expands. Encountering strangeness stretches and expands our self-image and seeds the rich potential for our collective conversations.” - Brad Howe
Brad Howe began his career in Brazil after studying history at the University of Sao Paulo. His work presents the influence of inquiry into the aesthetics of various cultures and distinct movements in the continuum of art history. His work continues to connect with international communities, exhibiting and completing site-specific commissions both in the US and abroad. Known for his sculpture practice, Howe’s focus also includes the representation of objects through diverse means, including photography.
Brad Howe
"The purpose of art is to address our projections, good and bad, attractive and grotesque, our strengths as well as our delusions, in order to know ourselves and in turn our true relationship with others, and ultimately our connection with life.”
“If we are to engage in the project of self-edification, the evolution of self, the enterprise is tied to our imagination. As Richard Rorty indicates, imagination is bound by our vocabulary, and it is in the growth of vocabulary we should focus. Vocabulary is tied to experience, and it is in energized moments of exposure to strangeness that our vocabulary expands. Encountering strangeness stretches and expands our self-image and seeds the rich potential for our collective conversations.” - Brad Howe
Brad Howe began his career in Brazil after studying history at the University of Sao Paulo. His work presents the influence of inquiry into the aesthetics of various cultures and distinct movements in the continuum of art history. His work continues to connect with international communities, exhibiting and completing site-specific commissions both in the US and abroad. Known for his sculpture practice, Howe’s focus also includes the representation of objects through diverse means, including photography.