Madeline Hollander

Bortolami is pleased to present the gallery’s fourth presentation and third solo exhibition by artist and choreographer Madeline Hollander. Entanglement continues Hollander’s expansion of movement notation, transcribing dance and complex patterns as a series of moving objects.

At the center of Entanglement are six new sculptures composed of joined parabolic mirrors and a rotating base, generating the optical illusion of a floating object just above their surface, like a dervish mirage. Here, the mirrors house a sequence of unique ‘action figures’. Each represents a singular choreographic movement that collectively creates a 24-sequenced holographic choreography over the course of the exhibition. They are spectral ballerinas pirouetting in a jewelry box, springing into motion with the viewer’s glance.

They are also miniature metonyms for a broader inquiry into choreographic notation derived from Hollander’s interest in quantum entanglement, a paradoxical phenomenon which Einstein called “spooky action at a distance,” in which two particles, despite being separated in space and time, act in tandem. With a deceptively simple play of optics, each action figure leads its hovering, ghostly twin in a pas de deux that renders one of physics’ most uncanny principles as a novel proposition for choreography: if spin, position and momentum can be transferred instantly across space and time, what could that mean for the communication of dance?

Three large aluminum trefoil knots punctuate the exhibition, awaiting activation. Each entwined mobius-like form is composed using a formula which optimizes its rolling capabilities; once nudged into action they have the capacity to roll perpetually. The variable equations encoded in each knot inscribe their movement with a unique gait and wobble.

The adjoining small gallery presents Hollander’s Nonlocomotion, an installation composed of Southern Pacific & Amtrak Surfrider model trains running nose to nose, one pressing forward and one in reverse so that, like an ouroboros of push-pull, they circle as one. A nod to the historic, disruptive speed of the locomotive in early modernity, the double train’s travail is both prologue and epilogue to the quantum compression of time and space.

Initially trained as a ballet dancer, Madeline Hollander (b. 1986, Los Angeles, CA) studied cultural anthropology and visual arts at Barnard College (BA) and Bard College (MFA), New York. Solo exhibitions of her work have been mounted at the Whitney Museum of American Art (2021); the University of Texas at Austin, Visual Arts Center (2020); Bortolami Gallery, New York (2020); The Artist’s Institute, New York (2018). Her work has been exhibited at the Brandhorst Museum, Munich, Germany (2022); Performa Biennial, New York (2021); The Aldrich Museum, Connecticut (2020); the Whitney Biennial curated by Rujeko Hockley and Jane Panetta (2019), Helsinki Contemporary, Finland (2019), the Work Marathon Festival at the Serpentine Galleries in London (2018), and Centre Pompidou Metz, France (2019).

As a choreographer, Hollander’s pieces have been performed at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; the Joyce, New York; The Théâtre des Champs-Elysées, Paris, and Louvre Abu Dhabi with the Los Angeles Dance Project, and she has collaborated with Jordan Peele on his feature film Us (2019) and Urs Fisher’s immersive installation Play at Gagosian, New York (2019) and Jeffrey Deitch, Los Angeles, CA (2019).