Madelyn Kellum: Night Changes

October 29 – December 14

Opening Wednesday, October 29 with a reception from 6-8pm

Madelyn Kellum’s painting practice resembles as much the entrenched silhouettes of early 20th century symbolists as the glossy veneers of American pop-cultural iconography; an amalgam that results in compositions that are both visually arresting and thoughtfully detailed. Named for the 2014 saccharine pop-hit by One Direction, Kellum infuses carefree paparazzi photos of celebrity culture with haunting displays of war-era artillery and devastation. The song itself, despite mainstream appeal, also references the grandeur of sentimental moments within the larger context of global disorder, and the often catastrophic accumulation of time, an inspiration for Kellum that amounts to monumental compositions sometimes at historical scale. The band’s leading man himself, Harry Styles, played a death-defying British soldier in the blockbuster film Dunkirk, one of many casting decisions that glamorized the allied war effort and the ensuing global dominance of western media culture. In Kellum’s paintings the lines between reality and fiction are equally difficult to distinguish. The artist book and lectern that anchors the exhibition similarly includes references to Justin Bieber’s Beauty and a Beat video, a feel-good anthem that shows Bieber celebrating amidst a choregraphed group of bikini-clad, party-goers reimagined as a whirlpool of lost souls in the mythical River Styx, simultaneously fossilizing the intimate experiences of consumer youth culture while casting a suspicious shadow on representations of perceived post-war American supremacy. 

While the astounding detail of Kellum’s canvases contain a seemingly infinite amount of amusing references, the inimitable magnitude of her paintings resists any interpretation of her practice as purely humorous or political. In order to achieve this textural complexity, each canvas is underlaid with a distinguishing gesso treatment made from hand-carved linoleum stamps; in one case replicating a 14th Century embroidery titled the Adoration of the Magi Altarcloth. Kellum’s intent remains unclear in replacing the ancient saints represented in the medieval tapestry, but her technique memorializes the spectral iconoclasts that populate her new visual universe. 

A riotous miasma of western life, the moral perspective of Kellum’s fantastical vision appears decidedly absent as if such questions might no longer logically resonate in the sphere of art, media, and popular culture. When the battle of Normandy absorbs seamlessly into quiet memories at the beach, and firework celebrations turn to incendiary bombs, when your fleeting youth mimics societal decay, the question of what to choose feels less like an exercise in identity-building and more a confrontation with the contradictions of consumerism and a disaffected admission that, despite the totality of devastation, you will be entertained. 

Originally from Naples, Florida (b. 2002) Madelyn Kellum received her BA from Fashion Institute of Technology in 2024. She has since appeared in group exhibitions at Cheremoya in Los Angeles, Quarters Gallery in Los Angeles, Kasmin Gallery in New York, 1969 Gallery in New York, and Sébastian Bertrand in Geneva. Her work has been featured in Harvard University Press publication Peripheries, NYC-based interview series Super!, and Hyperallergic. Kellum currently lives and works in Brooklyn, New York.