"Expansion" by Paige Bradley

Expansion and its Timeless Beauty 

Context and Historical Identity

For three decades, Paige Bradley has made a name for herself as a unique and focused artist.  Her work largely consists of figurative bronzes, casted metals in the images of human beings.  Bradley captures, through her sculptors, moments of change, triumph, and liberation of the human experience.  Despite modern art's trend towards abstract and conceptual art, Bradley has retained a love of figurative art, "The figure to me is the perfect vehicle to communicate the human condition.  My definition of success is to be a visionary through truthful and courageous artwork, work that communicates what it feels like to be alive in the world today."  

Bradley became an Internet sensation beginning in 2004, when a photograph of her statue "Expansion" went viral.  The statue is a sculpture from Bradley's fairly recent Metamorphosis collection.  Yet despite her worldly culture and outlook, Bradley combines the modern mind with classical art forms, giving her artwork a distinctly other-worldly yet instinctual quality.  Common to Bradley's work are themes of freedom, spirituality, self-discovery, rebirth, and evolution.  

In "Expansion", a young woman resembling the artist herself, sits in lotus position.  Cracks in the cast iron pour out an inner light, the woman's inner soul expanding beyond the confines of its vessel.  There is a jaggedness, a violence, yet a patient elegance to the fissures webbing the woman's figure.  Physical fragility and an immense force pouring from an unseeable source. 

The Artist's Message

As with all visual art, Bradley displays her message plainly.  How viewers choose to register that art is entirely subjective and, oftentimes, instinctual, but found in key points of Bradley's sculpture.  My eyes, for instance, immediately registered the familiar aspects of "Expansion".  The figure sits in lotus position, eyes closed in concentration.  This stark allusion to Hinduism (or Buddhism) invites the concepts of rebirth, reincarnation, and Atman (the idea that ultimate divinity resides in all living things).  Cracks of light breaking the figure from within reinforce this idea; the subject appears to achieve nirvana, and in doing so, must break her worldly limitations.

The poignant moment captured in "Expansion" is sobered by the work's dark undertones, "From the moment we are born, the world tends to have a container already built for us to fit inside," Mrs. Bradley wrote in a synopsis of the piece. "A social security number, a gender, a race, a profession or an I.Q. I ponder if we are more defined by the container we are in, rather than what we are inside. Would we recognize ourselves if we could expand beyond our bodies? Would we still be able to exist if we were authentically 'un-contained'?"  In this brief statement, it becomes clear that "Expansion" is no mandala, no one among thousands of joyful works dedicated to human salvation and enlightenment. Rather, Bradley views nirvana as a separation of self from the world.  Not only that, but she poses this figure as a realistic question, a demonstration, rather than a hypothetical.  She asks the time-old question of "nature versus nurture" by attempting to answer it, through this figure's personal revelation.  In order to break out of our indoctrination and enculturated identities, we must be willing to break ourselves; humans must be able to remove themselves from what they are to discover who they are, to separate what we learn from what we know. This idea is not only fascinating in its boldness, but its darkness. Few people ask themselves these questions, and less pursue them, leaving unanswered the universal human question, "Who am I?"  Bradley makes a powerful argument that we are not what we are made into, but something of much greater power, which the civilized world has done nothing but contain. Its a fascinating depiction, awe-inspiring and demoralizing, gentle and destructive, of a woman destroying her physical need in every way, in the simplest pursuit of knowing oneself.

A Hope in the Beyond

Honestly, I picked this sculpture because I came across the Internet-famous photograph of it by coincidence.  From the lotus position and the obvious light of "nirvana" shining out of the figure, I immediately assumed that I understood the work.  It seemed an easy task to talk about "liberation" and "self-discovery" and all the now-cliches of Eastern religion.  It wasn't until I researched the work and reflected on Bradley's intention for the piece that I began to take pause.  

I have, like all of us, been engaged in debates or questions of "Nature vs. Nurture" and I've brushed it off as a topic of particular interest.  My personal answer is that we are a combination of the two.  But that is as far I've ever wandered into the question.  Bradley takes this idea to new depths, displaying a cynical attitude towards establishment and civilization and a simultaneously wide-eyed wonder of enlightenment.  She takes this question not as a hypothetical nor a debate-inducing class topic, but a very real, very necessary one.  She ponders, through "Expansion" the lengths to which we would have to dedicate ourselves to the truth in order to discover it (that is to say, destroy ourselves).  It's the ultimate humility to be able to say that what we think we know means nothing and by destroying our conceited "understanding" of the world, we might un-cloud our eyes to a world where judgment and law cease to have meaning.

While writing about these ideas, which I do hope are aligned with Mrs. Bradley's intentions, I became short of breath in my excitement and inquiry.  The more I thought about what "Expansion" seemed to say, the more I struggled to articulate my thoughts, the more involved I became with the concept (the beauty) of destroying oneself in the pursuit of peaceful, discovered self.  

"Expansion", in my experience, was a misleading piece of art.  It seemed 'basic' at a glance, but its message is incredibly modern and emotional.  Bradley tore across this woman's body, ripping her breasts, stomach, and legs, and molded this woman's peaceful face with such care and fervor that I can feel her pain, her relief, and her hope.  It's a visually stunning piece of art and a testament to Mrs. Bradley's creativity and human artistry.