(…) Madeleine Boschan's architectural, minimalist geometric sculptures are constituted in relation to the body and space and are both imaginary and real places for social encounters and interactions.

The sculptor has been preoccupied with the architectural principle of the portal for many years. For her, a portal - always an expression of a community - stands for the human cultural space, while opening up and closing off, has always defined our social, ethical and aesthetic spaces. Her portals can thus be understood as a semi-permeable skin of our inner cultural space verso the outer natural space.

Their titles are often borrowed from poems by poets such as E. E. Cummings and James Schuyler. Similar to a poem, they create an atmospheric space that is able to generate and influence individual moods and sensations.

The relation of their surfaces and angles suggest that the works are based on mathematical calculations. But appearances are deceptive, for they arise much more from the artist's physical sensibility and intuition. She traces how arms open, the knee bends, the leg stretches, and physical postures and positions find themswelves in space. The clarity and geometric rigour thus develop from her subjective sense of proportion.

In the extremely painterly, coloured surfaces of the portals, a dynamic, strictly guided brushstroke can also be seen, which is created by meditatively placed movements. The interconnected lines that form self-contained surfaces must be read as an expression of the artist's psychological as well as physical sensibility.

With the movement of the viewers in the space and the interplay of form, colour and light, the portals create a shadow play in the surrounding space. Their openings, similar to Adrian Altintas's Cutouts, reveal the view of the space behind them and allow different axes of vision to emerge.

The three-part, walk-in sculpture “Somewhere I have never travelled, gladly beyond any experience (Parataxe)”, 2023, is composed of monochrome black and white aluminium sheets. The vertical, towering and asymmetrical forms in turn create a spherical space that is both interior and exterior in free alternation and enters into a dialogue with the surrounding architecture. The coexistence of symmetry and asymmetry unbalances the human measure as a subjective, spatial perception, so that the viewers have to redefine their own position within this structure.

Both artistic approaches thus also have a deeply human dimension that challenges the subjective perception of the recipients on different levels.

Text / Curator: Hannah Eckstein

photos by Kilian Bless