Mark Bradford characterizes his work as “social abstraction”: though rooted in the formal languages of twentieth-century modernism, it addresses political, economic, and environmental issues, particularly those that impact marginalized people. Bradford sources objects from the city environment, mimicking signage as it is overlaid and weathered through months or years of display. Thus public spaces become sites of multiple overlapping and symbolic, but distinct, meanings. Black Dot specifically draws on fliers that proliferate in low-income neighborhoods when the real estate market declines. Aiming to exploit people in difficult circumstances, they promise fast cash to those willing to sell their homes to developers.