StandardVision Artist Showcase: Examining Memory and Ephemerality with Artist Madeleine Tonzi

For the month of September, StandardVision has curated a site-specific showcase from Los Angeles-based artist Madeleine Tonzi on view across a number of StandardVision’s large-scale exterior displays throughout Los Angeles through September 30th.

Born and raised in Santa Fe, New Mexico, Tonzi is a painter and a muralist whose work is focused on capturing the essence of ephemeral moments, and is a reflection of her investigation into memory and place and the relationships we form with the various environments we experience. Tonzi’s aesthetic inescapably echos her time spent in the high desert landscape of New Mexico, while simultaneously giving way to her experiences traveling and living in California.

Finding both solace and discomfort in the places that she goes, Tonzi creates vivid abstract representational landscapes—both organic and architectural—which utilize a distinct visual language in order to emote what can not always be put into words as we move through time and space. Recently, Tonzi’s works seek to capture the grief that emerges when—as a result of human impact on the climate and our ecosystem—we must leave a place for environmental reasons. The love and connection we experience and which pulls us to preserve and protect a place are central themes in this new series of paintings and monotype prints.

Her recent works also feature multitudes of archways, which seemingly create portals and passageways within each piece. Tonzi shares that her interest in this shape sparks from its ability to represent ‘a delineation between the inner and outer, within and without, and a separation between (or framing of) the built and natural world.’ Exploring the intersection between the human experience and our built world, Tonzi’s works ask how the interplay between architecture and the natural world might coalesce. The arch shaped elements also add a dynamic and immersive quality to each piece, expanding the viewer’s experience of the work beyond the pictureplane itself.

Catch works by Madeleine Tonzi on view at 3rd Street Crossing, 888 N Vermont, Courtyard Marriott LA Live, Kurve LA, and 3500 6th Street through September 30th, and learn more about the artist on her website.