Tobias Madison Livres

“Drawings” is a collection of digital drawings created between 2008 and early 2012 by the young Swiss artist Tobias Madison. The works are based on the gestural application of software chains of command)-)Madison uses this formal language as work material for exhibitions, textile applications and performances. Pop, a love-hate relationship with abstraction, emptied design codes of the past decades, as well as fragments and ruins of the digital culture are interwoven into the iconography of the images. Influenced by the fast, almost spastic transition into the digital culture, Madison continually questions authorship, medium and distribution. Without ever lapsing into the prevalent cultural pessimism, Madison, in his maximum aesthetic, articulates a biting commentary on the present (http://www.978-3-906011.ch/#10 ; 21.5.2013).

Tobias Madison (*1985, Switzerland) is part of a generation of young artists who embrace cooperative strategies in their artistic processes. His diverse roles span various media, including sculpture, video, computer-generated painting, audio, text, photography, and scanned images, all characterized by a process-driven approach filled with references to found symbols. This publication reflects a 2-phase exhibition at Kunsthalle Zürich, showcasing Madison's belief that exhibitions transcend mere spatial limitations, allowing for temporal and physical expansion. The presentation occurred at multiple locations in Zurich, including the artist-run AP News and Longstreet Bar, linked by a series of events. The gallery's newsletter served as an ephemeral publication, featuring the artist's text alongside other content, now included in the book. Additionally, it deconstructs a poster series by Mathis Altman (*1987) that promoted club nights during the exhibition. This work is the first monograph dedicated to Madison and is part of the Kunsthalle Zürich series. It features a newly commissioned text by John Beeson and conversations with Beatrix Ruf and Bruce Hainley, providing deeper insights into the artist's work and concepts.