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 (extinction, domestication, global ecological devastation) but is also born out of hope, such as the natural world might encourage empathy and could become a gateway to further understanding. Her post-apocalyptic depictions of forests and landscapes are enveloped in romantic ideas of their 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 on its last leg.

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, 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 exhibitions include Art Brussels, Newchild Gallery, Brussels; Two Years and Change, OLYMPIA, New York (2023); IMMERSED, Jack Siebert Projects, Los Angeles (2023); Death Motel, Newchild Gallery, Antwerp (2022, solo); Art Antwerp, Newchild Gallery, Antwerp (2022); Bodyland, Max Hetzler, Berlin (2022); Nine Lives, Steve Turner, Los Angeles (2022, solo); Fertile Plains, Dinner Gallery, New York (2022); Madeleine Bialke, M. Florine Démosthène, Sahara Longe, Nadia Waheed, Alexander Berggruen, New York (2022); Playground of Geometry, CICA Vancouver, Vancouver (2022); Symbiosis (curated by Beth Rudin DeWoody), Berkshire Botanic Gardens, Stockbridge (2022); Roots, Sof:Art Foundation, Bologna (2022); and Long Summer, Huxley-Parlour, London (2021, solo). 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 and Fundacion Medianoche0. She lives and works in Brooklyn, New York.