These forests used to be full of giants, and the country was brimming with even wider chestnut trees before logging and a blight accidentally introduced to the continent devastated them a hundred years ago. Their post-apocalypse is our lived-in normal. But this is the only world I know, the only trees I’ve lived with. My relationship to the white pine on the far shore of the reservoir, spanning decades, changed when I learned its history. ''Significant Other'' looks at the connections between trees and people as companion species, and some of the relationships between one living thing and another. Trees are both significant and other; dream-like apparitions that dot the landscape and loom overhead. Trees are incredibly numerous in our lives, blanketing hills and lining streets. They are quieter conversationalists than other creatures. This group of paintings blends meditative scenes from Prospect Park in Brooklyn from this recent winter and images of the old-growth forest I grew up alongside, from summer’s past.

The somber, still geometry of the park trees contrasts with the more fantastical dream-like imagery of the wild forests, both displaying stability and wildness. The settings are stitched together with a color palette designed to read more as emotion than description. Light comes from mysterious sources, prioritizing symbolic meaning or emotional resonance over realistic interpretations. The paintings posit both trees and people as characters on a journey through and over time, leaning towards each other in search of connection. The trees and figures themselves become intrepid adventurers in a dangerous unknown terrain with titles that nod to ships and sailors or space travelers, often focusing on the point where two worlds intersect. The resulting works come from a pursuit to add more context and understanding to places I purport to know, and to find reasons and ways to see them differently.'

- Madeleine Bialke

Madeleine Bialke has had solo exhibitions at Visions West Contemporary, Denver, CO; Davis Originals, Taos, AR (online); Deanna Evans Projects, New York, NY; and Harper’s Books, East Hampton, NY. Her work has been in group shows at Newchild, Antwerp, BE; Asya Geisberg, New York, NY; Olympia, New York, NY; and in two-person shows at SPRING/BREAK Art Show, New York, NY; Greenpoint Terminal Gallery, Brooklyn, NY; and Greene House Gallery, Brooklyn, NY. Madeleine has been featured in New American Paintings, The Boston Globe, and Elephant.art, and mentioned in n+1 online and artnet News. She received her MFA from Boston University in 2016, and her BFA from Plattsburgh State University of New York in 2013. She lives and works in Brooklyn, NY.