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Jörg Madlener

Sandstorm: The First Five Days of the War
(May 3 – June 2, 2007)

Opening: Thursday, May 3^rd from 6-8pm

Gallery Hours:  
Tuesday - Friday, 10am to 6pm 
Saturday, 10am to 5pm

The Brenda Taylor Gallery is pleased to present an exhibition of new work by the painter, Jörg Madlener.  “Sandstorm: The First Five Days of the War” is of course, a direct reference to the current conflict in Iraq – a war that four years into, shows no sign of a peaceful resolution.

            Rather than focus on the thorny political issues that surrounding this climate, the artist has chosen to focus on the underlying psychological issues of the war and the way it is interpreted by the public through the barrage of images presented in mass media outlets.  In the studio, Madlener found himself mesmerized by several battlefield images of U.S. Soldiers reproduced in The New York Times.  As in past series, he has again used these photographic source materials as a starting point to reveal deeper truths about the human condition through the endless repainting and alteration of the original image.        

Subjectively, the sand swept deserts of Iraq loans itself to Madlener’s vigorous use of the dry brush to blur figurative elements in his work.  This blurred, unfocused line serves not only as a compositional agent, but also as a sly comment on the carefully edited images presented to public of the Iraqi battlefield.  The idea of a veiled truth is at the core of these works.  When discussing this series the artist states that, “As an advocate of the devil it veils: the spectator has to penetrate.”  In Madlener’s paintings, the fog of war has been replaced with sand.

Jörg Madlener was born in Germany in 1939, lived in Belgium 35 years, and is now living and working in the United States.  He has had one man exhibitions at the Venice and Sao Paulo Biennials, the FIAC in Paris, Art Basel, and Arco Madrid.  His work is in the collections of various museums including Solomon Guggenheim Museum, le Musée d’Art Moderne in Brussels and the Albertina in Vienna.