Mark Bradford with guests at the opening reception for his first museum survey at the Wexner Center.

Scorched Earth, (above) 2006, (94 1/2 x 118 in.) refers to the fiery end to the Tulsa Race Riot of 1921.

Over the course of three days, a rumor of an assault on a young white woman inflamed racial tensions and ended in the virtual demolition of Greenwood, in Tulsa, Oklahoma, home to 10,000 black families and the country’s most prosperous business community, also known as Black Wall Street. A mob of thousands of white men burned more than 30 city blocks to the ground, leaving hundreds of African Americans dead and thousands more homeless.

The arc in the upper left of Bradford’s composition, could reference an attack from the outside, as an organized mass of white rectangles starts to surround the painting’s black and blackened center. The title, is a term frequently used to describe the punishing destruction of war, “I took that moment in history because we’re talking so much about war over there,” Bradford said. “It’s always war that’s happening in the Middle East, not about war on our soil. So I was interested in the ways in which wars reshape territory and reshape land.”