The exhibition includes 20 paintings on canvas made over the last year. The largest work in the show, which measures 4.5 meters wide, is an explosive and immersive painting that bridges the public and private aspects of MadC’s practice.
Through her canvas-bound studio paintings MadC breathes new life into the storied history of abstraction. Defined by declarative mark-making and layered, vibrant colours, her translucent gestures interact with each other to create their own internal space and kinetic figure-ground relationships. MadC’s canvas painting practice is undeniably rooted in graffiti art and culture, thus transporting the explosive energy and visual language of street art into HENI Gallery.
"Luminous colours, dynamic lines, translucent layers creating their own cosmos in space and time – these are the characteristics of MadC’s work… Above all, the works show how MadC continues to pursue a tireless search to implement her own visions. The fact that she repeatedly crosses the borders of art categories and discourses remains an important, if not fundamental, characteristic of her artistic approach. Thus, the position as an outsider that MadC has taken again and again – be it her childhood in Ethiopia, her experience of returning to the GDR, being a woman in the graffiti scene, being an artist with a graffiti background in the visual arts – has helped her work to achieve its freedom of unique expression."
- Luisa Heese in MadC: Street to Canvas, HENI Publishing, 2021