THE STABLES

When he’s not making paintings, Mads Lindberg (1984, Denmark) clears out the houses of dead people. It’s an oddly fitting side gig for an artist: it pays well, the hours are flexible, and there’s a bounty of treasure to be found amongst the unwanted belongings. Not that the Copenhagen-based artist is interested in jewels or finery, quite the opposite – it’s amateur painting that catches Lindberg’s eye. 

The starting point of Lindberg's practice is found imagery, that he appropriates and re-elaborates with the aim of questioning its material, formal, symbolic and economic meanings. The action of translating discarded paintings into his own artworks is for Lindberg a way to approach the canvas from a detached and analytical point of view. This allows him to carry on a systematic study of painting as a medium, while avoiding the implications connected to the mystic aura surrounding the "artist at work". In Lindberg's vision, every image has the right to exist beyond its aesthetic quality, and for this reason it should belong to a circular economy that trespass the parameters imposed by the hierarchic and elitist art market. Here, as with everything Mads Lindberg makes, is an attitude compounding sincerity and irony, a rootlessness and restlessness which satirically disarms the authority necessary for heroism and exposes the folly of the struggle for Truth

Lindberg’s interest in hobby painting started in 2018 while he was on a residency in New York. After visiting a few thrift stores, Lindberg started to photograph paintings he liked—from pictures of the Eiffel Tower to E.T.—which he then replicated back in his studio. Near the end of his residency he donated his new versions to other thrift stores, asking shop assistants to give each painting a short descriptive title. “Afterwards, I went around these stores a few times to see how they were installed,” says Lindberg. “Some of them looked really good placed next to old basketball sneakers and worn out TVs”, he adds with a smile.

Mads Lindberg (b. 1984, DK) lives and works in Copenhagen, DK. Exhibitions include; C.C.C. Gallery, Copenhagen, DK, 2023 (upcoming); Sculpture 3D, SIMIAN, Copenhagen, DK, 2022 (solo) and Recent Paintings, Freddy, New York, US, 2022 (duo). Lindberg graduated with MFA from The Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts, Copenhagen, DK and co-runs the curatorial project Jir Sandel with Magnus Frederik Clausen.