Maud Madsen
“Daisy Chain”
Marianne Boesky Gallery
New York, 509 West 24 Street
The works that compose Daisy Chain place Madsen’s subjects in an array of environments—often recalling locations specific to the artist’s upbringing—but maintain the figure as the central focus. Caught between adulthood and childhood, the characters in Madsen’s work examine the insecurities of adolescence, including the artist’s hyper awareness of her own body as a young woman. Madsen displays her figures from unique and unusual vantage points, shown crouched on the ground or seen from below, to effectively put the body and its imperfections on full display in the canvas.
Mosquito Bites, 2022 Acrylic on linen 60 x 45 inches 152.4 x 114.3 cm © Maud Madsen Photo: Lance Brewer
To craft the framework of her paintings, Madsen draws from the feeling of a particular experience and the imagery of her youth to transplant her characters into re-envisioned, invented memories. The artist depicts moments such as scooping dirt in a sandbox with a plastic bucket or sleeping in the sticky summer humidity to recall familiar experiences of childhood. Madsen’s use of saturated tones transports her characters into serene, almost dream-like spaces. To construct her scenes, the artist will go so far as to recreate miniature models such as of a childhood swing set to better capture the imagery and feeling of the space.
While the paintings’ surroundings recall feelings of child-like exploration, the bodies of women characters are mature and grounded to further map the often-awkward transitions of adolescence. The obscured faces in each painting leave space for ambiguity: subjects are seemingly unaware of the viewer and the onlooker is left room to see themselves in the figure. Madsen focuses on the female body to rewrite the memories of her past and give the women in her images room to be on display. Although beginning from a personal place, the artist constructs spaces in which insecurity, empowerment, and the tension of the real and imagined can coalesce to allow for collective reflection.
