Madison Gallery presents for ZsONAMACO SUR, 2023 a diverse group of artists representing Spain, the United States, and Denmark. Each of these multi-disciplined artists create in their own distinct and unique artistic voice in the world of contemporary art. This year’s booth presentation will involve three artists.

“When we talk about how ideas are constructed, I would say for me it is the architecture of my thoughts. It is about the process, reducing forms to basic elements. The interplay between the additive and subtractive, the making and unmaking, constitutes the essence of my work. Using materials such as paint, sand, cement and plaster, working through a process where deconstruction and reconstruction of the surface goes beyond the subjective form of the original image, I appropriate paint conceptually as my “own paint”. The value of a monochrome painting becomes a strategy or a technique where Its self-imposed limitations are often regarded as demanding or difficult, I find it makes my work quite alive and accessible” -Anne-Sophie Øgaard

“Odalisque, is one of the feminine-form representations in Academic painting of the 19th century, as we see for example in Dominique Ingres. We can be surprised that his most famous Odalisque was commissioned by a woman, Caroline Bonaparte, Napoleon’s sister. Women commissioning this kind of nude was something common at that time. Contrary to what we may think, women’s nudes were reflections of powerful women. I (dare) to compare to the FEMEN, feminist protesters of today. The Odalisque in its time, being probably bolder than FEMEN or nudes in contemporary happenings. Dominique Ingres’ The Grand Odalisque itself was not well understood (even accused of archaicism) in his time but revindicated by 20th century modernity.” -Lino Lago

“Years ago I had the opportunity to visit and stay with a small group of indigenous people who live in the Mididi rainforest near the border between Bolivia and Peru. For the past 10 years or so since my visit to the Mididi, I have titled my paintings after extinct or nearly extinct languages to celebrate and champion the different ways people see the world – through the lens of their culture, and their experiences.” -Donald Martiny

Founded by Lorna York in 2007, Madison Gallery’s program focuses on internationally recognized, museum-level artists whose work contributes to domestic and international cultural dialogue. The gallery presents significant Latin artists and brings international artists to San Diego for the first time. The core gallery program focuses on young and emerging artists, but the gallery also punctuates the program with historical exhibitions to provide depth and context. Artists represented by Madison Gallery receive critical attention and are widely exhibited. Many of the gallery’s primary artists, shown initially with Madison Gallery, are now being exhibited internationally and by established galleries in other cities, proving that the gallery has become a springboard for young talent.

Madison Gallery was founded by Lorna York in 2001. The program focuses on internationally recognized, museum-level artists whose work contributes to domestic and international cultural dialogue. The gallery presents significant Latin artists and brings international artists to San Diego for the first time. The core gallery program focuses on young and emerging artists, but the gallery also punctuates the program with historical exhibitions to provide depth and context. Artists represented by Madison Gallery receive critical attention and are widely exhibited. Many of the gallery’s primary artists, shown initially with Madison Gallery, are now being exhibited internationally and by established galleries in other cities, proving that the gallery has become a springboard for young talent.

Madison Gallery will be exhibiting Donald Martiny at the 59th Venice Biennale, April 23 through November 2022 in partnership with the ECC European Cultural Centre at the Palazzo Bembo.

Art and spirituality have always been intimately connected, not only in the way they address the nature of our existence, but also because of their ability to register deep within us. Together they viscerally connect us to an inner feeling, spirit, or vital essence. This work by Donald Martiny strives for what Kandinsky described as the “vibration of the human soul.”

The painting titled Moment, is by far the most ambitious work Martiny has made to date. The painting is made of multiple elements, its creation demanding over one hundred liters of paint to produce. Working on the floor, the artist moves physically inside, around, and through the varied components of his compositions within the paint, pushing the viscus color across surfaces with his hands, arms, and body. The work is figurative in the sense that dynamic gestures relate to the human form in landscape. Shaped paintings have typically been made through an additive process, by applying paint to predetermined shapes. Martiny’s work challenges that notion. His gestures and completed compositions gain their power through a hybrid subtractive process that determines the final profile of the work. From a formal perspective, his process forces us to question established definitions which define our fundamental understanding of painting.

This installation is possible thanks to the efforts of curator Lorna York and Madison Gallery.

Donald Martiny, born in Schenectady, NY, 1953, currently lives and works in Ivoryton, CT. Studies include School of Visual Arts, The Art Students League of New York, New York University, and Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts.

Martiny’s work can be found in the permanent collections of One World Trade Center, NY; Phoenix Art Museum, Phoenix, AZ; Crocker Art Museum, Sacramento, CA; Amon Carter Museum of American Art, Fort Worth, TX; Newcomb Art Museum at Tulane University, New Orleans, LA; FWMoA, Fort Wayne, IN; Las Vegas Art Museum, Las Vegas, NV; Lamborghini Museum, Bologna, Italy; Los Angeles International Airport (LAX); Frost Bank Tower, Fort Worth, TX; Duke University Hospital, Durham, NC. His work also numbers among several prestigious private collections including the Grahm Gund Family Foundation, Cambridge, MA.

Martiny’s work has been featured by Huffington Post, NPR, Philadelphia Inquirer, Architectural Digest Magazine, New American Paintings, Decor Magazine, Hong Kong Tatler, Woven Tale Press, Vogue Living Australia, and Whitehot Magazine.

Madison Gallery is excited to announce our participation in ZONA MACO, Mexico City’s largest Latin American Art Fair. This year, we will be featuring works from Jaehyo Lee and Robert Montgomery, two artists who are inspired by a desire to glorify and protect Nature in all her forms.   

Jaehyo Lee creates freestanding sculpture and reliefs from humble, mundane, materials, mainly logs and steel nails. What is strongly expressed by Jaehyo Lee’s work is a concern with creating an immersive appreciation of the natural world. Lee not only makes projects about nature, he also uses natural materials so that his sculptures both exemplify and comment on the natural world. Allowing the materials to speak to him, he builds self-contained worlds that mysteriously communicate with their outer surroundings.
 

To transform his raw material, he employs traditional skills of chopping, sawing, carving, sanding, and polishing. He uses fire and a furnace as an integral part of making his metal ‘nail’ pieces. It is a time-consuming, physically demanding process. His heroic manipulation of reluctant raw material is a rejection of modern technological reproduction, such as 3D printing. The elegance of his work is hard-won, and it’s reflected in the construction of his pieces.

The sculptures are biomorphic, meaning their cell-like structures are organic and fluid. Some have a ‘micro/macro’ effect: they could be a tiny organism magnified or a planet made small. Others reference everyday domestic archetypes: vases, tables and chairs. Curve and contour are expressed. Textures are smooth, silky and invite touch. Reliefs are made from wood studded with nails, which are burnt and then burnished. The nails, like tadpoles, create silvery, rhythmic forms across blackened, charred surfaces. The artist’s various treatments serve to emphasize and enhance the inherent beauty of his carefully chosen material. These pieces invoke the values of landscape, whether they’re viewed indoors or outdoors. Despite their poised and refined appearance, these objects carry an animistic power. These are ‘totemic’ objects, focused for contemplation and meditation. To experience them is to connect to their earthly nature. Jaehyo Lee, through his single-minded action, reveals the spirit in the material.

Lee has work in the following permanent collections: The National Museum of Contemporary Art, Korea; Moran Museum, Korea Ilmin Museum of Art, Korea; Busan Municipal Museum of Art, Korea Gyeonggi Museum of Modern Art, Korea; 63 City Tower, Korea; Osaka Contemporary Art Center of Japan; Hyogo Prefecture Museum of Art, Japan; Sculpture in Woodland, Ireland; Cornell University Herbert F. Johnson Museum, USA; Phoenix Island, Korea; Pusan National University Hospital, Korea; Industrial Bank, Taiwan; Echigo-Tsumari Art Triennial, Japan; EMAAR Building, Dubai; Daegu Bank, Korea; Lotte World Tower, Korea; Art Sella Sculpture Park, Italy; Gothenburg Botanical Garden, Sweden.

Robert Montgomery is a Scottish artist who is well known for his work with text in public space. His work brings text art closer to the language of poetry. He represented the UK at the 2012 Kochi Biennale and the 2016 Yinchuan Biennale. His work is in museum collections across the world, including the Albright Knox in New York and the Museum of Fine Arts Houston, and he has had solo museum projects at the Aspen Art Museum in Colorado, Oklahoma Contemporary in Oklahoma City, and the Cer Modern Museum in Ankara. He has worked with low consumption LED lighting and solar power since 2010. He was one of the official artists for ArtCOP21 in Paris in 2015, and in 2016 he made a large-scale solar powered installation for the Climate Coalition. Andy Warhol’s Interview magazine says, “The poems he composes suggest a steady faith that humanity can heal the ecological and emotional trauma of our time”.

Lately, his work has focused on issues of climate change. The Scottish poet’s most recent project is a collaboration with the clean energy nonprofit Little Sun. They collaborated to produce Grace of the Sun – a solar powered light poem urging commitment to renewable energy at the UN climate conference (COP26). After the artwork’s installation in Glasgow (Oct 30-Nov 12), the work will be dismantled and the lights will join Little Sun’s wider efforts to provide clean, affordable solar power to the 600 million people living without electricity in Sub-Saharan Africa;  the nonprofit has brought solar light and power to over 3 million people here to date. Montgomery writes, “We are now at the frightening point where the climate crisis has arrived. I’m thrilled to collaborate with Little Sun and Octopus Energy – this project is a beacon of hope. Instead of looking under the ground for energy we should have all along been looking up. A solution is visible to us all the time, every day: the sun. There’s a great beauty in the realization that the sun is there to save us, if we only make the effort to reach out to it. I hope that others across the world will join us to tell the story of solar’s powerful force for good.” 

Robert Montgomery and Jaehyo Lee are two distinct artists whose work is elevated when viewed side by side. Lee’s work seeks to develop an appreciation for nature in his audience. His work expresses the beauty of nature on a macro and micro level. Above all else, Jaehyo Lee’s work celebrates life and nature. Robert Montgomery then pushes his audience to take action to preserve the natural world around them for future generations to come. He does this through the use of visually striking bold text that are billboard scale installations, as well as his own written words that sends a message to thousands. Jaehyo Lee’s use of raw materials asks the viewer to contemplate and reconnect to the natural world from which we came. Robert Montgomery asks to put these thoughts into actions. Together these two artists create a strong dialogue about the natural world and how we should interact with it. 

Palm Springs, February 11th, 2016 – Madison Gallery is featured in this year’s Palm Springs Fine

Art Fair, Booth 209. This collection will focus on the rich aesthetics of the landscape of Palm

Springs in tandem with its rich culture and history. Works by Jeff Kahm, Dina Goldstein, Donald

Martiny and RETNA will be featured.

In the tradition of indigenous cultures, Jeff Kahm uses abstract and geometric motifs to create

and convey meaning; such forms were pivotal to the early development of visual cultures across

many societies. Dina Goldstein’s photographic series, ‘In the Dollhouse’ plays out as a narrative,

peeking into the home and marriage of the world’s most iconic dolls, Barbie, and her partner Ken.

It offers a profound commentary on the transient nature of beauty, the difficulty of marriage and

the importance of authenticity.

Breaking from the traditional rectangular forms associated with painting, Donald Martiny creates

Gestures; a series of free-formed paintings constructed from polymer and dispersed pigments.

Martiny forgoes the canvas entirely to create gestural abstraction in these dynamic brushstrokes.

As a former street artist, RETNA captures the idea of a universal language. This language is

composed of symbols inspired by Egyptian hieroglyphics, Arabic, Hebrew and South Pacific

languages. His ubiquitous style has made him one of the most well collected artists of his

generation.

*For VIP tickets, please contact us at 858-459-0836 or info@madisongalleries.com as tickets are

limited.

Founded in 2001, Madison Gallery is committed to representing emerging, mid-career and

established international artists whom work in a range of media. Inspired by an earnest

dedication and passion for art, the gallery consistently exhibits a high standard of contemporary

art. Madison Gallery works closely in building private, corporate and public collections thus

placing it amongst the leading contemporary galleries in California.