Jared Madere, his first solo exhibition in the United States at Whitney Museum of American Art

Jared Madere will receive his first solo exhibition in the United States at the #whitneymuseum of American Art, with the opening of a new installation in the first-floor John R. Eckel, Jr. Foundation Gallery. On view from October 16 through January 3, 2016, the exhibition features a large-scale installation that resembles a fountain with a statute of a mother holding her child. Inspired by decorative water features found in parks and urban commons, Madere seeks to highlight the civic nature of the gallery, which is free to the public. The exhibition, organized by associate curator Christopher Y. Lew, is also the inaugural presentation within the Whitney’s series of exhibitions by emerging artists, which Lew will oversee.
Making use of diverse materials and sculptural techniques—from concrete to LED lights—Madere describes his untitled installation as one that has passed through many multi-dimensional portals and bears physical evidence of its journey through time and space. His new work depicts a mother and her child as the infant’s body seems to transform into a harp. Madere embraces the range of thought and belief that his installation might suggest, and welcomes viewers to ascribe a variety of associations to his composition. Some elements of the work seem to have been uncovered from the ancient past, while other sections seem to stem from the present or distant future. Madere combines timeless construction methods with recent technologies, alluding to alternate dimensions of reality in which unrelated ideas, materials, and styles may coexist in probable and improbable ways.
Madere (b. 1986), who is based in #newyork, is part of an emerging generation of artists who embrace a gritty, abject aesthetic that is decidedly different than the polished, technology-based work associated with many young artists today. He primarily creates installation-based works featuring disparate materials such as salt, flowers, foodstuffs, and plastic tarps that are assembled and aggregated in a manner that insists on their material connections to society, economics, industry, and human emotion. Madere has participated in numerous exhibitions at venues including David Lewis, #newyork; Bortolami Gallery, #newyork; Michael Thibault Gallery, Los Angeles; Croy Nielsen, Berlin; and Le Magasin, Grenoble, France; and he is also the founder of Bed-Stuy Love Affair, an artist-run gallery focused on emerging art.
An online essay on Jared Madere’s work will be available at whitney.org/JaredMadere.
Support for this exhibition is provided by Judy Chen and Kevin Yao.
credits: #jaredmadere, exhibition view at Armada, Milan, 2015.
Photo Beppe Raso. Courtesy of Armada.

Jared Madere
Oct 16, 2015–Jan 3, 2016
Whitney Museum of American Art
www.whitney.org