Whitehot Magazine

By PETALA IRONCLOUD 

Brad Kahlhamer’s paintings, drawings, sculptures, and installations navigate lived experience, collective memory, and economic storytelling honed at the Topps Company of Red Hook, where he worked as an art director alongside Art Spiegelman in new product development. His current solo show ‘Bowery Nation: Birds Are Talking’ at Venus Over Manhattan, on view through 7th June, he debuts a new body of work created primarily at his winter studio in Mesa, Arizona, including eight large-scale paintings on bedsheets, a newly conceived “Supercatcher” sculpture, and a large work on paper, which together map a deeply personal cosmology that draws upon Indigenous storytelling, punk aes-thetics, Abstract Expressionism, and the raw textures of New York City street culture.

‘Bowery Nation: Birds Are Talking’ is a rich and layered title. What does it mean to you, and how does it guide the narrative of this new body of work?

Birds are talking—it's about communication and storytelling. Each bedsheet in the show is a chapter, with the largest piece, '6 AM in Mesa,' serving as the book cover. The work draws from Lakota winter counts and ledger drawings, which I see as America's first graphic novels. After studying these incredible documents at the Jocelyn Museum—putting on white gloves to examine this vital but submerged history—I combined that influence with my underground comics background from working at *Raw* magazine with Art Spiegelman in the '80s. It's this melting together of Indigenous storytelling traditions and underground cartooning that shapes the narrative structure of the entire exhibition.

You’ve used bedsheets as your canvas for this series, a striking choice. What drew you to that material, and how does it connect to the histories you’re referencing, such as Plains Indian winter counts?

The bedsheets connect directly to how Plains Indian winter counts traveled with communities—they were portable histories that moved with the people. I travel constantly for residencies and exhibitions, so I needed something with scale that could fold into carry-on luggage. These bedsheets become my traveling studio. Several pieces actually started in the desert outside Mesa, Arizona, then traveled with me—by car, by plane—to various residencies. The largest work journeyed from Mesa to Park Rapids, Minnesota, then to Italy, back to Mesa, and finally finished here in New York. Like those historical winter counts, these works accumulate their stories through movement, carrying the narrative of their own making across landscapes.

The “Supercatcher” sculpture is a centerpiece in this show. Can you talk about its conception and what it symbolizes within your broader cosmology?

The Supercatcher evolved from my smaller 'next level figures'—little doll-like sculptures where I'd been adding wire dreamcatcher elements. One night in my studio, playing guitar, I saw these loose wire pieces hanging against my window as a constellation—multiple circles forming a larger universe. That's when it clicked: taking something private and making it public, scaling up the intimate dreamcatcher into something monumental.

I was also thinking about how New Age philosophy often appropriates Indigenous symbols, so I wanted to reclaim that space with something I called a 'Supercatcher.' The piece ended up in SFMOMA's collection, not far from where I first conceived it. I've made about thirty Supercatchers since then. The one in 'Birds Are Talking' is the latest iteration—it includes text and has this long, cascading tail that connects to the broader narrative of the show.

Your Mesa, Arizona studio played a key role in the creation of this work. How does geography—desert versus urban, Mesa versus Manhattan—influence your practice?

I've long been fascinated by the idea of re-exploration—flipping the historical narrative of European colonization moving west. In the '90s, I did a show called 'Red River Crossing' where I imagined exploring from my East Coast position back westward. Eventually I acquired property in Mesa, which became my outpost studio.

The geography creates this productive tension: the East Coast is culturally active for contemporary art, but Arizona, New Mexico, the Dakotas—that's ancestral ground. Making work in that region is deeply exciting. I love working outside there, something you can't do in the city, though I do have a studio in Bushwick. Mesa gives me space to think differently, to connect with landscapes and histories that inform the work in ways Manhattan never could. The desert strips things down to essentials.

People don't realize the kind of very place-based practice—the depth of that for Native artists.

Exactly. It's something I sometimes dream about—Phoenix becoming this new western art center. But it's really hard because you have to deal with contemporary market issues, and New York is still the center. From the '80s on, I'd watch a lot of Native artists come in, but they would only stay for five days and then leave. It's only been recently that people are taking the studio seriously—like let's stay in Brooklyn. But maintaining anything in New York is very difficult, so I think that all has to be factored in.

This is the reason I write about art instead of making it: cloud storage is so much cheaper.

I'm dealing with physical objects, and it's not getting any easier. Just try shipping artwork to Europe…

Your work navigates complex questions of Indigenous identity, adoption, and belonging. How has your perspective on these themes evolved over time, and how are they manifest in ‘Bowery Nation: Birds Are Talking’?

That's a big question. Over 34, 35 solo shows, I've become much more comfortable in my own skin. I think 'Bowery Nation: Birds Are Talking' might actually be my best show yet—it's an accumulation and gathering of all my particular talents, whether on bedsheets or in the Supercatcher.

It's definitely been a long journey. You have to put yourself in vulnerable positions, and if you're adopted, that's your baseline—you never really quite know where you stand. You're always looking from one fence to another. Sometimes there's acceptance, sometimes not. But as an artist, that might actually be good. Art should be propositional, challenging. I've always maintained this steady inside-outside position, and I think that's where the work comes from.

You work with the hand you're dealt. The best thing about coming to New York City was finding a number of people just like me—we all escaped from maybe more rural communities and came here to challenge each other and ourselves.

I can understand what you're what you're saying at least having a mom who's adopted

Oh, your mother was adopted. I think you mentioned this before. 

Yes, it's something she doesn't divulge much about. I don't always understand the way that that shows up for her. It causes you to look heavily for a sense of belonging in ways that maybe people who aren't adopted don't.

Yeah, it's very interesting. In all my travels, I've asked Native women about adoption, and if you probe too much, there's almost a reticence—particularly around the idea of giving up a child for adoption. It's a very uncomfortable notion. When you add the strong community and tribal bonds on top of that, there are a lot of layers you have to penetrate, even if you want to. And then there's the question of acceptance or affirmation—we're all looking for affirmation, no matter who we are.

Right, it's interesting. I wonder whether you've had challenges connecting with Native communities or finding that sense of belonging—maybe not least because we're so burdened with federal measures of tribal belonging, and we sometimes internalize that and police each other.

Yeah, you're walking into that room. I've experienced all of that, especially in the '80s and '90s before the internet, when fewer Native people were in academia.

I remember getting coffee in Rapid City and this woman said, 'Oh, you were educated back east and now you come back to your community'—just for getting coffee. She was telling me I had somehow left and come back.

Once I was walking with the Denver Art Museum director through a heavy urban Indigenous area. A houseless Native guy said hi to me as we passed, and I thought, 'What a crazy world'—here's this Indigenous person, the museum director, and me directly in the middle. It really hit me, the various worlds I live in.

That happens a lot. Now you have more of a formal academic identity coupled with academic training, and they are, in a sense—I actually find them more rigid, almost less inclusive. I think it might have something to do with the procuring of funds and grants.

You often describe your practice as a form of personal cartography. What kind of map do you feel you’re drawing with this show?

I've always had a thing for historic books. In Mesa, there's a downtown bookstore with expensive shelves of Native material, and I love going through and pulling things off, connecting pictures. In a way, I think this show is a large expansion of me flipping through a book and trying to make connective dots.

I'm a big fan of this small museum in Buffalo, Wyoming, that has quite a trove of old photos of community—early contact, white local farmers, things like that. I'm interested in that kind of fringe contact that books can illuminate.

That's what the bedsheets do—put that up large enough in sequential form, like a book. Only maybe I'm going to write from the bottom or flip through backwards, which matches the ledger drawing thing—drawing in the margins, but then the margins become the story, right? The inside becomes outside.

How has your background as a punk musician and your work in commercial art shaped your visual language today?

That was very specific to the early '80s. I was recruited by a waitress at Salka—a local downtown spot where a lot of artists hung out, right off the Bowery. The proximity to that huge downtown culture bubbling up around CBGB meant you couldn't help but absorb this energy and fury just by osmosis. You're backstage with other bands, sharing ideas.

I had brought in a kind of country-style guitar, which I quickly adapted to a faster punk thing—but it really wasn't so much punk as reggae-punk, a hybrid. I think that's where I got the idea of hybridizing two distinct forms, which informed my first show as a visual artist around 1999. The music set up a blueprint for hybrid work.

At the time, you read a lot of Native literature about people coming off the reservation trying to navigate urban culture. I probably just thought about that and put it into my work. It always had this somewhat violent, unsettled, anxious quality.

No pun intended.

Yeah, it was that time in the air.

If improvisation also kind of feels central to your process, how do you balance instinct with intention in the studio?

I've always enjoyed drawing and painting that has a feel to it—in your ear, you know? I don't want to know what you think so much. I want to know what you feel. There's something about hand and pencil and paintbrush that doesn't lie. Once your brain starts transmitting to your hand, if you're in that flow, you feel it—you know you're making something at a certain point.

I think I'm just telling stories that are filtered through that hand, and it somehow feels correct to me. I don't really hesitate. It's a bit like playing music—once the song starts and you're in that song, you gotta keep going. I'm interested in composition and control, but I also like chaos. Chaos and control are kind of a mixture, and those are the kinds of artists I typically like—nothing too tight, but more emotional.

Your work is now in the collections of MoMA and the Whitney, among others. How do you reflect on the institutional embrace of your work, and has it changed how you approach your practice?

Those two institutions—I'm not really thinking about them when I wake up. I never think, 'Oh, I'm this great artist working for MoMA.' I do occasionally wonder when they'll actually show the work. When you look at their basement storage, you're like, 'God, this is never coming out'—there are thousands of objects down there.

There is a little bit of confidence that comes with it, but it's not something I dwell on. I'm always interested in the upcoming piece. I have a show up now, but I'm also thinking about September—what am I going to do in September? I'm traveling, doing some shows. You're always thinking about the future.

But I do feel lucky. To get to a point where museums consider you a serious person takes a lot of people—collectors, writers, they all have to converge. In that sense, I consider myself very lucky. 

It seems like you've had moments throughout your career where there's been a lot of attention around your work.

Right, though here it's kind of a later thing. Europe actually kick-started it off. They have a different approach—they seemed more sympathetic to what I was doing.

Why do you think that is?

Those countries are quite a bit older, so their scope of history in relationship to America is of interest to them. My history would've been very off-brand here, but European intellectuals are very into that—they're looking at how their history connects to America.

Right, that's interesting. There's been such a push in the American market for what's new, what's commercial, just because that's how our society functions. I can see how in Europe, with their much longer history in place, they think about that more.

Yeah, they've got to take care of all those cave paintings. I love going to the crypts of churches in Italy, going down into that history of life and death. We don't have that kind of depth—that's why I like going to ruins so much. I was just up near Flagstaff drawing something I really like.

That circles back to why it's important to have a practice outside of New York—those historical bearings are totally not present there and more apparent in ruins or other landscapes across the US.

Yeah, and the atmosphere hits your drawing. If you're in South Dakota feeling that wind, smelling the grass, or in the heat of Arizona with the adobe, it puts a whole other level of realness on what you're doing. It's important to get out there, travel around, and kick over a few stones.

Venus Over Manhattan is known for revitalizing interest in underrecognized voices. What does your relationship with this gallery mean to you at this stage in your career?

It's a very adult gallery, and it's a good place for me at this stage. I really like Adam's take on things—he's a writer, he's candid and curious, with a big range of interests. He also plays music, which I love. We connect on multiple levels that are richer than a typical artist-dealer relationship.

I like that it's not always about the next thing with him. He understands history, artistic development, experience.

What’s next for you after ‘Bowery Nation: Birds Are Talking’?

I’ve got my work featured in Terraphilia opening at Thyssen-Bornemisza in Madrid July 1 through September. After that, who knows what’s on the horizon in September. WM