Madeleine Boschan

Madeleine Boschan (born 1979) is a German artist.

Biography Madeleine Boschan studied at the Hochschule für Bildende Künste Braunschweig from 2000 to 2006, where she was taught by John Armleder.

Since 2010 she has participated in numerous institutional exhibitions throughout Europe and North America focusing on: artistic strategies dealing with preconditioned role-models and relationships of people and architecture, as well as new tendencies of Abstract art, contemporary art from Berlin or Germany, and the interdisciplinary impact of the cabinet of curiosities on contemporary thinking, science and exhibition practice.

She lives and works in Berlin, Germany.

Practice Starting in 2008, Madeleine Boschan built her sculptures from found material. These first objets trouvés were modified, reassembled and brought into relation with each other by colour interventions. The different components lost their common value of utilization. With their machine-like appearance these sculptures seem to suggest expedience, still, they inhere in a kind of defunctionalised dissociation – as do indigenous fetishes or desolate and disused apparatus.

From her extensive occupation with Samuel Beckett's TV-pieces, such as "Quod I" and "Quod II", which he realized in 1981 for the German SDR, and his late "closed space stories" as "Worstward Ho" (1983) Madeleine Boschan has derived genuine poetics of space: Space 'itself' is empty and incomprehensible. It is for a body to appear within this void to designate it as a place, to grant contour, form, and shape to it, to constitute it as 'surrounding space'. According to Beckett, Boschan emphasises that spatial experience is first and foremost a physical experience: how does a body gain its halt and stand within the void, how does it find its appropriate place and holds up this position, how does it interact with other bodies?

In 2013 and 2014, she revised and reconsidered her primary pictorial vocabulary: standing, reclining, towering, tilting, arching as well as expansion, contraction, colour, form, measure, and positioning. For in a prudently arranged turn and, particularly, in contrast to the gestalt-like linearity of her prior works, she addresses herself to purely planar bodies; situated residing freely throughout the given space in utterly different phenomenal states; each for itself, yet, constantly in relation to each other. Furthermore, Madeleine Boschan has inseparably incorporated "Technicolor's" base colours (red, blue, green, yellow, magenta, cyan, + black and white) into her forms. Colour is, thus, not just appended or appliquéd to her sculptures; rather, the specific chromaticity, being an immediate part of the sculptural operation, originates its very own specific forms.

After 2016, "pieces dwelling on the concept of 'spaces within space' and, at the same time, of passage or transition" Brazilian Tropicália, Jorge Ben, Astrud Gilberto, and Oscar Niemeyer, or James Cameron's cinematic use of the L.A. River-bed, Blade Runner'''s electric billboards, the topic of a ruinous antiquity, and the pastel colours of 1980's Miami.

In 2018 and 2019, Madeleine Boschan boldly turned the negative void space of the open passages and walk-through situations of her previous portals into positive shapes or entities. The beholders are confronted with a new corporeality. Accordingly, the surrounding walls and spaces associate themselves with these planar objects, conveying both their given objecthood as well as their potential pictorialness.

Solo exhibitions

2022 Lying on stony ground the fragments, Kirche St. Getrud, Cologne it´s just a kiss away, Galerie Bernd Kugler, Innsbruck, Austria

2019 In twilight these ridiculous and exquisite things descendingly move among the people, gently and imperishably, Sunday-S Gallery, Copenhagen, Denmark Tulips and chimneys, Galeria Maior, Palma de Mallorca, Spain the enormous room, Galerie Bernd Kugler, Innsbruck, Austria

2017 BB 105/146, Galerie Lange und Pult, Zurich, Switzerland What lays bare in me, Collectors Agenda, Vienna, Austria Partance, Galerie Bernd Kugler, Innsbruck, Austria

2016 in which its gaze, bent merely on itself, upholds and gleams, Hezi Cohen Gallery, Tel Aviv, Israel

2015 Escapement (with Andy Hope 1930), Neue Galerie Gladbeck, Germany Galerie Bernd Kugler, Innsbruck or am I seduced by its ambient mauve, Herrenhaus Edenkoben, Germany what´s wrong with your eyes, Larry, Berlin, Germany

2014 Technicolor: a) Feld, b) Fläche, Marburger Kunstverein, Marburg, Germany Capri, Vitamin, Reutlingen, Germany Deal with ´em, Jagla, Köln, Germany

2013 Closed Space Stories, Hezi Cohen Gallery, Tel Aviv, Israel Don't you wonder sometimes 'bout sound and vision, Kunstverein Heppenheim, Heppenheim, Germany Say a body. Where none. Say a place. Where none. For the body. To be in., Kunstverein Ulm, Ulm, Germany Scope = immeasurable, Einraumhaus, Mannheim, Germany Anwesenheit unerreichbarer Bezugspunkte, Galerie Bernd Kugler, Innsbruck, Austria

2012 An open Field, a Factory, a By-pass, Gloria, Berlin, Germany

2011 Kayfabe, Galerie Bernd Kugler, Innsbruck, Austria RoidRage, Kwadrat, Berlin, Germany Niteflix, Autocenter, Berlin, Germany

2010 Kalt, modern und teuer, Kwadrat, Berlin, Germany Cosmic Camping, Appartement, Berlin, Germany

Group exhibitions 202031:women. (Exhibition after Marcel Duchamp, 1943)., Daimler Art Collection, Berlin, BerlinJubeljahr, Städtisches Museum Schloss Salder, Salzgitter SalzgitterIntermezzo, Galerie Bernd Kugler, Innsbruck, Austria Innsbruck

2019some trees, Nino Mier Gallery, Los Angeles, Los AngelesComrades of time IV, Whatspace c/o Hardspace, Basel BaselAvanti, Michael Horbach Stiftung, Cologne Cologne

2018Junge Kunst / Junge Künstler, Skulpturenpark Heidelberg, HeidelbergLight in / as image, Daimler Art Collection

2017Zehn Jahre Zürich, Galerie Lange + Pult, Zurich, SwitzerlandLob des Schattens (Italienischer Raum), Marc Strauss Gallery New York City, USModern sculpture, Galería Casado Santapau, Madrid, SpainArtists´Books for Everything, Weserburg | Museum für Moderne Kunst, BremenBerlin-Klondyke, Umetnostna Galereija Maribor, Maribor, SloweniaThree, two, one, Abbot Kinney, Venice, USThe Gift Collection, Galerie Bernd Kugler, Innsbruck, Austria

2016 Enea, Jona, SwitzerlandMoby Dick Filets, Secession, Vienna, AustriaWelt am Rand, Kunsthaus Erfurtbedsitter, Mirante, Vienna, AustriaStill Still Life, Galerie Bernd Kugler, Innsbruck, Austria

2015Wo ist hier?# 2: Raum und Gegenwart, Kunstverein Reutlingen, Germany Enea, Jona, Switzerland18, Galerija Contra, Zagreb, SloveniaVanitas extended, Stedelijk Museum, Ypres, BelgiumStandard International – Post Spatial Devices No. II, Geisberg, Berlin, GermanyBerliner Edition, Salon Dahlmann, Berlin, GermanyLeipziger Edition, Kulturforum Altenkamp, Schloss Holte–Stukenbrock, GermanyCaritatis, Semperdepot, Vienna, Austria

2014Luggage and observations, Galerie Klaus Gerrit Friese, Stuttgart, Germany Psycho Killer, qu'est-ce que c'est?, Galerie Börgmann, Mönchengladbach, Germany Present, Kunstraum Kreuzberg / Bethanien, Berlin, Germany

2013Publications, Galerie Bernd Kugler, Innsbruck, AustriaBerlin Klondyke, Hipp Halle, Gmunden, AustriaNovecento mai visto. Highlights from the Daimler Art Collection. From Albers to Warhol to now, Museo di Santa Giulia, Brescia, ItalyThe Legend of the Shelves, Autocenter, Berlin, Germany

2012 Accelerating toward Apocalypse (Private / Corporate VII), Daimler Contemporary, Berlin, Germany Gare de l'Est, Esslinger Kunstverein, Villa Merkel, Esslingen, Germany En désordre, Philara – Sammlung zeitgenössischer Kunst, Düsseldorf, Germany Berlin Klondyke, Neuer Pfaffenhofener Kunstverein, Pfaffenhofen, Germany Gentle Giants II, Kwadrat, Berlin, Germany Abstract confusion, Kunsthalle Erfurt, Erfurt, Germany Status. Berlin (1), Künstlerhaus Bethanien, Berlin, Germany Black Oriental, Galerie Bernd Kugler, Innsbruck, Austria Eine Frau, ein Baum, eine Kuh, Museum für Konkrete Kunst Ingolstadt, Ingolstadt, Germany

2011 Based in Berlin, Hamburger Bahnhof, Berlin, Germany Berlin Klondyke, Art Center, Los Angeles, U.S. Synecdoche, Bourouina Gallery, Berlin, Germany Abstract confusion'', Kunstverein Ulm, Ulm, Germany

Private and public collections Daimler Art Collection, Stuttgart, Germany Philara – Sammlung zeitgenössischer Kunst, Düsseldorf, Germany