In her enigmatic paintings, Madeline Silber convincingly fuses nature and artifice, transforming inanimate objects into anthropomorphic subjects. Her curvy, attenuated, bulbous forms are familiar-seeming but strange; life forms seen under the microscope, perhaps, or aspergilli from another planet. They are rubbery, perfectly smooth, and fast receptacles, full of a liquid or gas that can be compressed through tendrils and tubes and then expanded into globular bulbs of various dimensions and connotations—pods, galls, heads, bodies. Each jewel-colored element is given convincing physical presence through the careful delineation of light playing over volume. This light seems to come from outside the fabricated scene, from the viewer’s space, which psychically helps to connect the two realms.

Silber’s subjects are far from inert; they bounce, float, and drift. Lithe and acrobatic, they contend with gravity, although it appears to be a more permissive kind than what is known on earth. The figures almost always operate within the confines of the intimately scaled canvas. One form may touch an edge of the composition but never reaches outside these borders, which seem to comprise its only world, the way a droplet of liquid on the slide of a microscope comprises a trapped microbe’s only world. At the same time, the relatively uninflected, warmly colored, painted background against which these biomorphs perform suggests suspension in a limitless dream space.

Silber often arranges her forms in complex relationships, which can feel, by turns, erotic, emotive, playful, or familial. The titles she gives her paintings imply, alternately, social activity (Embrace, Promise, Whisper), conscious purpose (Dreamer, Reflective, Restless), or physical action (Sway, Rise, Pulse). She has also ascribed human motives and motifs to her objects, describing them as “standing in for figures” or as “family members struggling for autonomy,” “trying to hold things together,” or “tending [to] human relationships.” Although ultimately ambiguous, her witty surrogates pose assuredly under our scrutiny, eager to charm us into believing they are fellow travelers from a shared world.

Thomas Piché Jr.

Director, Roland Gibson Gallery

 

Artnews Arttalk article

Artnews, June 2007, page 32

GALLERY&STUDIO Reviews

Excerpts from 3 reviews by Ed McCormack in GALLERY&STUDIO Magazine. from "Talent" Comes in All Styles and Sizes at Allan Stone Gallery, Nov-Dec 2005/Jan 2006, p. 20. ...Outnumbered but not outgunned, four abstract artists hold their own admirably among all these novel approaches to subject matter...Madeline Silber with oddly compelling oils of wiggling biomorphic forms in candy-apple hues... from At Allan Stone: A Convergence of Diverse Traditions, Nov-Dec 2004/Jan 2005, p 28 (includes a reproduction of the painting Pollination). ...while other aspects of painterliness were celebrated in...a wonderfully peculiar abstraction by Madeline Silber, combining pristine execution and biomorphic zaniness... from "Talent 2003" at Allan Stone Gallery: A Sharper Focus, Nov-Dec 2003/Jan2004, p. 18. ...More austere forms of abstraction are also at home at Allan Stone,...as well as the biomorphic compositions of another intriquing newcomer named Madeline Silber whose pristine yet peculiarly animated paintings can be as easily compared to the Cingular cell phone as to Miro...

Art Bars Article

Flavorpill Review

Reprinted from flavorpill SF, December 3, 2002, by Laura Richard Janku from an online review of Madeline Silber's show Brink at Heather Marx Gallery. ...On the other end of things are the zaftig paintings of Madeline Silber. Tumescent bubbles and ligaments strike tenuous poses in a pearlescent palette. A unique brand of representational abstraction, works like Tilt, Lean and Split suggest hard science, soft emotions, pheromones, and pinball relationships.