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 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 TreesCurling Flames, Newchild, Antwerp (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, Fundacion Medianoche0 and Nassima Landau Foundation. She lives and works in Brooklyn, New York.

 

 

 

SELECTED SOLO EXHIBITIONS

2023 / Leaves of Grass, Kiaf with Newchild, Seoul

2023 / Giants in the Dusk, Huxley-Parlour Gallery, London

2022 / Death Motel, Newchild, Antwerp

2022 / Nine Lives, Steve Turner, Los Angeles

2021 / Long Summer, Huxley-Parlour Gallery, London

2021 / Significant Other, Taymour Grahne Projects, London (online)

2020 / Mothers & Daughters, Visions West Contemporary, Denver
2020 / COVID Care Package Project, Deanna Evans Projects, New York
2020 / Ghosts of the Northeast, Davis Originals, Taos, Arizona

 

SELECTED GROUP EXHIBITIONS

2023 / High Voltage 4, Nassima Landau, Tel Aviv

2023 / Art Brussels, Newchild, Brussels

2023 / Two Years and Change, OLYMPIA, New York

2023 / IMMERSED, Jack Siebert Projects, Los Angeles

2022 / Art Antwerp, Newchild, Antwerp

2022 / Madeleine Bialke, M. Florine Démosthène, Sahara Longe, Nadia Waheed, Alexander Berggruen, New York

2022 / ARTBO 2022, Newchild, Bogotá

2022 / Bodyland, Max Hetzler, Berlin

2022 / Curling Flames, Shivering Trees, Newchild, Antwerp

2022 / The Natural World: Part II, Alexander Berggruen Gallery, New York

2022 / Fertile Plains, Dinner Gallery, New York

2021 / Wild Blue Yonder, Newchild, Antwerp
2020 / In the Weeds, Olympia, New York, USA (curated by Georgia McGovern)
2020 / Mountain Time, Visions West Contemporary, Bozeman