Both Rapid City and Prairie Girls by Brad Kahlhamer blend sex and death, urban and rural, artificial and natural, and dark and light. For Kahlhamer, the hidden language of things in-between is everything. His paintings and works on paper display an exuberant expressionistic line and mix the energy of country western music with Native American symbolism and subversive figuration that can include strippers and skeletons, as seen in his installations at MCA DENVER. A newly cast 9 1/2 foot tall bronze totem pole is on view for the first time. His installation projects take on a character that reads as landscape, swirling with an atavistic energy as if a sound accompanies their visual rhythm.

Brad Kahlhamer was born in 1956 and currently lives and works in New York City. He received a BFA from the University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh. He has exhibited at Scottsdale Contemporary Art Museum, Phoenix, AZ; Deitch Projects, New York, NY and Stuart Shave/Modern Art, London, UK among many others.

Special thanks to Thyssen-Bornemisza Art Contemporary, Vienna, Austria; Vicki & Kent Logan; Stuart Shave/Modern Art, London, UK; and Deitch Projects, New York, NY.

Above: Brad Kahlhamer, Brooklyn Massive (detail), 2007, watercolor and ink on paper, 44 1/2 x 59 3/4 inches. Courtesy of Stuart Shave/Modern Art, London and Deitch Projects, New York.