Madeline Hollander: Score for 7 Solos

The rhythms, patterns, and mechanisms that define contemporary life inform Madeline Hollander’s interdisciplinary practice. A keen observer of her surroundings, Hollander draws upon the performances and performativity of mundane sounds and visuals. In her work, concrete mixers, traffic lights, and safety drills become the basis for choreographic notations, multi-part installations, videos, and performances. Dancers activate these objects and spaces, moving alongside machines or within large-scale installations in the context of the gallery. Hollander’s work addresses safety and precarity; invoking the fragility of a contemporary existence marked by uncertainty and change, she points to the complex infrastructures, systems, and procedures we have developed to address the impending disasters we face in our world.

Score for 7 Solos revisits a project Hollander first realized in 2017. In this iteration, a selection of retired fire hoses collected from the Austin Fire Department extends across the gallery floor. The hoses are reminders of the environmental catastrophes we witness locally and globally on an increasingly regular basis, including the wildfires that swept through California in 2020. In the context of the gallery, the hoses assume a new function as a site-responsive choreographic score awaiting interpretation. Working with the Department of Theatre and Dance, Hollander has invited a group of student dancers to respond to these repurposed objects through improvisational movements. Documentation of these performances can be viewed from the VAC's south lawn every evening Wednesday – Saturday, 5 PM – midnight.

Madeline Hollander: Score for 7 Solos is the artist’s first solo exhibition in Texas.

This exhibition is organized by MacKenzie Stevens, Director, with Clare Donnelly, Gallery Manager.

Madeline Hollander: Score for 7 Solos is supported, in part, by Texas Performing Arts. Special thanks to the Austin Fire Department, Leah Cox, Erica Gionfriddo, Gesel Mason, Allison Orr, Magdalena Riley, and the Department of Theatre and Dance.

Madeline Hollander, Seven Solos, 2021. Two-channel digital video projection, color. Seven solo performances created by dancers from the Department of Theatre & Dance, University of Texas at Austin. 28:07 min. (loop). Courtesy of the artist and Bortolami Gallery, New York. 

Dancers: Venese Alcantar, Rebecca Carrillo, Lexie Nelson, Howard Rochelle, Erica Saucedo, Camille Wiltz, Uwazi Zamani

Videography: Ariel René Jackson

Bio

Madeline Hollander (b. 1986, Los Angeles, California) received her BA from Barnard College of Columbia University in 2008 and her MFA from Bard College in 2018. Hollander has had solo exhibitions at Bortolami Gallery, New York (2020); Artist’s Institute, New York (2018); Bosse & Baum Gallery, London (2017); SIGNAL, Brooklyn (2016); and Luxembourg & Dayan Gallery, New York (2015). Her work has been exhibited and performed at Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum, Ridgefield, Connecticut (2020); Louvre Abu Dhabi (2019); Helsinki Contemporary (2019); Centre Pompidou Metz (2019); the Whitney Museum of American Art (2019); JOAN, Los Angeles (2018); and Serpentine Gallery, London (2018), among others. Hollander is the recipient of the 2020–21 Frieze BMW Open Work commission, and has an upcoming solo exhibition at the Whitney Museum of American Art opening in March 2021.