Mark Bradford’s title for his exhibition, Tomorrow is Another Day, Scarlett O’Hara’s last words in the classic film Gone with the Wind and the Margret Mitchel novel on which it is based, reflects the unmistakable optimism of the American South during the Reconstruction Era. I have always found Bradford’s work, with its urban layering of materials found on the streets and his mother’s  hair salon made into the most luxurious and seductive of painted/collaged abstract images to be extraordinary. Representing the United States at the 57th Biennale, he gives us a complex reading of America today from his biographical perspective. He infuses the narrative of his life into his abstract works.

Although Bradford is an abstractionist, he wants us to know about his life history as a gay black man raised by a single mother in urban Los Angles. He not only allows us to be in touch with who he is in his abstractions, he narrates his history with his titles, text and materials that refer to Greek mythology. He is painting abstractions but always articulates through his work with a poetic acknowledgment of his existence and presence.

This exhibition begins with a work, Barren, on the exterior of the United States Pavilion. Bradford takes this piece of Jeffersonian architecture, the pavilion being based on the architecture of Monticello, and transported it like the farmhouse in the tornado scene of The Wizard of OZ to the streets of Los Angeles. A pile of gravel has been dumped in front of the pavilion along with piles of trash, paper cups, and broken old hoses. Bradford thus tells us exactly who he is and where he comes from. "Hephaetus," a poem by Bradford, appears in niches on each side of the building, the text etched on cement on board. Hephaetus is the god of crafts, artisans and, of course, artists. In one version of the myth, the goddess Hera gave birth to Hephaetus and raised him alone, just as Bradford was raised by his single mother. This poetic retelling of the myth gives us much information about the artist and what he is doing in this pavilion; his work is abstract but his narrative is clear.

In the last room is Niagara, a video from 2005. In this artwork, which is projected on a standing wall, we watch the back of a young black man in bright yellow shorts and a tank top as he assertively, purposefully, and sexually walks down a street of Los Angeles. Bradford is giving us a clue to the narrative by the title once again. In the 1953 film Niagara, Marilyn Monroe, the icon of female sexuality, is shot famously from behind as we watch her walk seductively to meet her lover In this film noir, there is a feeling of impending disaster. In Bradford’s video we feel this doom as well; the young man’s sexuality is contrasted with the rawness of the urban street. We know as we watch him that this young man is vulnerable in his travels.