Madeleine Bialke

Madeleine Bialke’s paintings respond to our changing environment and reflect on her interest in nature and society. The tradition of landscape painting has taken numerous forms, with a changing outlook ever since the 19th century held a milestone as artists became more concerned with the profound changes in the natural world, often as a result of human influence on nature. Bialke’s desire to address ecological concerns in her paintings originates from environmental connotations such as extinction, domestication, and global ecological devastation. However, it is also born out of hope, believing that the natural world might encourage empathy and serve as a gateway to further understanding.

Her post-apocalyptic depictions of forests and landscapes are enveloped in romantic ideas of sublimity. Growing up in Upstate New York, close to the Adirondack Mountains, Bialke became fascinated with the power of nature and humanity’s smallness. Her compositions confront the viewer with a place echoing the experience of a lifestyle in close proximity to nature that is in the twilight of its existence. Within her practice, Bialke uses colour to generate and indicate emotion. Many of the new works penetrate our psyche with wide values, abutting hues, and gradients deceivingly natural that confront the viewer with a place where realism is unsettlingly familiar. Her depictions of the sky although in natural transitions are very uncharacteristic in colour: poisonous warm oranges, pinks that turn to greens, that turn to lavender, and mauves. Bialke’s use of colours might actually reflect a changing environment. Sometimes atypical hues show undisturbed like polluted gradients, referencing the balance and imbalance between colour and nature in an expressionistic way. The distinctive compositions built of layers upon layers of oil paint on linen, remind us that the natural world isn't exclusively a resource for humans but a living organism.

Madeleine Bialke (b. 1991 in New York) received her BFA in Studio Art from the Plattsburgh State University of New York and earned an MFA in Painting at Boston University, Massachusetts. Recent solo and group exhibitions include Art Brussels, Newchild, Brussels (2024); Dallas Art Fair, Alexander Berggruen, Dallas (2024); Loyal @ El Royale II, Loyal, Los Angeles (2024); Fully Bloomed, ART FOR CHANGE x Philips, Los Angeles (2024); Art Antwerp, Newchild, Antwerp (2023); Untitled Art Fair, Huxley-Parlour Gallery, Miami (2023); High Voltage 4, Nassima Landau, Tel Aviv (2023); Leaves of Grass, Kiaf with Newchild, Seoul (2023, solo); Giants in the Dusk, Huxley-Parlour, London (2023, solo); Art Brussels, Newchild, Brussels; Two Years and Change, OLYMPIA, New York (2023); IMMERSED, Jack Siebert Projects, Los Angeles (2023); Death Motel, Newchild, Antwerp (2022, solo); Art Antwerp, Newchild, Antwerp (2022); Bodyland, Max Hetzler, Berlin (2022); Shivering Trees, Curling Flames, Newchild, Antwerp (2022); Nine Lives, Steve Turner, Los Angeles (2022, solo); Fertile Plains, Dinner Gallery, New York (2022); Symbiosis, curated by Beth Rudin DeWoody, Berkshire Botanic Gardens, Stockbridge (2022). Madeleine Bialke was the Artist-in-Residence at North Western Oklahoma State University in 2018 and was awarded the John Walker MFA Painting and Sculpture Award in 2016. Her work is included in the collection of Beth Rudin DeWoody, Fundacion Medianoche0 and Nassima Landau Foundation. She lives and works in London.