“What would better express the current times than Barbara Madsen’s premonitory works selected to be in FIGBilbao 2020. They belong to a series of 8 works created during her residency at Guanlan Original Print Base in China during 2019. In this series, Madsen divides the paper in two. In one-part zoomorphic forms show us animals floating in freedom on flats colors which resembles nature. In the other, she depicts a glimpse of the debris belonging to a desolate industrial civilization…may you find any resemblance to reality?” ALICIA CANDIANI

Barbara Madsen is an American artist known for her work in photography, print, sculpture, and installation. Her vast collections of industrial matter — spark plugs, machine parts, welding masks, light switches, rubber, plastic, and photographs from daily observations – serve as the stimulus for her work in print, sculpture, video and installation.  Her art employs the tropes of modernism, popular culture and objects that are consumed and discarded creating a mythical narrative using devices that may be sinister, creepy, nostalgic and blithely campy. Color is the sirens song that lures the viewer in.

Madsen’s installations mine the reproduction of the object, they are realized through photographic prints, flattening and printing them on wallpaper and floor vinyl covering every surface of the gallery. Her encapsulated installations are spaces where nine feet tall fits and misfits can coexist. She has created installations at New York Public Library, 2015;  Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, 2006; the University of Delaware, 2005; and Drake University, 1999. She designed the set for Leopold and Loeb, a play at the Lowry Lab Theatre in Minneapolis in 2012. Post September 11th, Madsen was compelled to make billboards. Her anti-bigotry billboard, Eye 4 Eye = Blind, was raised above buildings in Jersey City and Revenge Never Ends was pasted behind NJPAC in Newark.In 2004 she was awarded a Puffin Foundation Fellowship for the next three banners in Washington D.C.. Madsen’s banner of the smiley face with its mouth wide open, like Edvard Munch’s scream and gas mask, was hoisted over the façade of the Corcoran Museum of Art at 1661 Pennsylvania Avenue, across the lawn from the White House.

Her solo exhibitions include the New York Public Library, Pratt Institute, Tyler School of Art, Millersville University, St. Lawrence University, Miami University, University of Delaware, Palacky University-CZ, Graficki Collective-Serbia, Scuola Internazionale di Grafica-Venice, ULUS Gallery-Serbia, Edinburgh Print Gallery-Scotland. Madsen has had over 100 group exhibitions in: Japan, China, Belgium, France, Spain, Serbia, Germany, Poland, India, United Arab Emirates. Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington DC, the New York Public Library, the Lowry Lab Theater in Minneapolis, the International Print Center, New York.

Madsen’s works are in the collections of: The Legion of Honor, San Francisco Museum of Art; Firestone Library, Princeton University; Swarthmore College, Lafayette College, New York Public Library; Library of Congress; Dartmouth College; University of Sharijah, United Arab Emirates; Guanlan Art Center, Shenzhen, China, and the Amoco Corporation.