Madeleine Boschan at Kebbel Villa, Schwandorf

Artist: Madeleine Boschan

Exhibition title: Claiming space, without ever taking space from space

Curated by: Jürgen Dehm

Venue: Kebbel Villa, Schwandorf, Germany

Date: September 15 – October 27, 2024

Photography: Clemens Mayer / all images copyright and courtesy of the artist and Kebbel Villa, Schwandorf

In her first solo exhibition in Bavaria, Berlin-based sculptor Madeleine Boschan is showing a combination of three of her elemental work groups, which are interacting with each other and were created especially for the exhibition space.

Boschan’s sculptures, with their minimal, geometric, architectural appearance, are based on the relationship between the body and space and are both imaginary and real places of social encounter and interaction. For the past decade, the sculptor has been exploring the architectural principle of the passage and the transitory relationship between inside and outside.

The sculpture, ‘Claiming space without ever taking space from space’, created this year, is also in keeping with the exhibition’s title – a line taken from Rainer-Maria Rilke’s poem ‘The Rose Bowl’ (1907), which not only symbolizes Rilke’s fresh view of things gained from his experiences with Rodin but also gives a special meaning to the ‘sculptural thing’, detaching it from conventional references to space and time. In the context of Boschan’s work, this precise contemplation of a thing, perceived with all the senses, could be read as a starting point for entering the wide-open inner space of the imagination and could expand and activate the viewer’s perception of her works. Because this piece, specially developed for the exhibition, creates a veritable decision within the space: emptiness is enveloped. The sculpture is painted in a pale turquoise color and rests on three points, allowing it to unfold directly on the floor, making it appear as if it was floating. The open structure, developed from a basic cube, allows an unobstructed view and frames the surrounding space. Walking around the work constantly reveals new perspectives and vistas. The work can thus be perceived as a semi-permeable membrane between space, thing, and viewer, allowing foreground and background, as well as the spaces in between, to merge.

Only a single point that provides balance – alongside the hard edges as stabilizing elements – can be found in Boschan’s sculpture group ‘T622’ and ‘T222’ (both from 2022). With their sulfur-yellow interiors and white exteriors, these works not only oscillate between occupying and spanning space but also between stationary and floating states. They evoke virtually crystalline and amorphous states of matter. In contrast to the compact, self-contained white of the outer surfaces, the shimmering sulfur yellow spreads not only to the immediate surroundings but also onto the floor. The yellowish reflections are visible evidence of this expansion.

The four elements of Boschan’s sculpture group ‘Somewhere I have never traveled, gladly beyond any experience II (Parataxe)’ (2024) are also of literary origin. These towering pieces correspond as equal parts of a whole within the exhibition space. The empty spaces between the pieces, which reappear here, function as a smooth, harmonizing connection. Similar to Boschan’s yellow floor works, a pink color levels the transition between surface and space, making the space and its surroundings appear diffuse. The emphasis is on the marking of spatial boundaries as well as their systematic dissolution. In addition to addressing issues of space, Madeleine Boschan also plays with different ways of perceiving space, in which the rigid framework of the natural sciences is disrupted by an interplay of proximity and distance, of concavities and convexities, and the relationship to things in a space-time context.

Madeleine Boschan (*1979, lives and works in Berlin) studied at the Hochschule für Bildende Künste Braunschweig and the École Supérieure d’Art et Design du Havre. Her work has been shown nationally and internationally in numerous solo and group exhibitions, including at Kunstmuseum Wolfsburg, Mercedes-Benz Museum, Stuttgart, Kunsthalle Erfurt, Neue Galerie Gladbeck, Galerie Bernd Kugler, Innsbruck, Stedelijk Museum, Ypres, Weserburg – Museum für Moderne Kunst and Kunstverein Friedrichshafen. She is represented by the Bernd Kugler Gallery, Innsbruck and the Hezi Cohen Gallery, Tel Aviv.