MadC

Claudia Walde (MadC)

Claudia Walde (MadC) Leipzig - 500Wall

Claudia Walde (MadC)

Claudia Walde (known as MadC,) is a graffiti artist from Germany who is known for her large scale outdoor artistic works.

MadC started her artistic trajectory as a teenage graffiti writer and has since developed her creative endeavors into various fields such as graphic design, writing, and fine art. Her first graffiti piece was in 1996 when she was 16 years old.^[1][2] She has studied at Burg Giebichenstein University of Art and Design in Halle and Central Saint Martins College in London, and carries a master's degree in graphic design.

Major Works

Books

MadC is an author and designer of two books on street and graffiti art; "Sticker City – Paper Graffiti Art" (2007) and "Street Fonts - Graffiti Alphabets From Around The World" (2011), which are both published under her birth name. She felt that graffiti was great a way to express herself due to the fact that all that mattered was the end product, no one had to know your identity.^[3] Street fonts features work from 154 artists from 30 different countries: in the artwork, Wilde directed the artists to use international alphabets that she had spent two years travelling to collect.^[4]

700 Wall

Her major international breakthrough came however in 2010 with the production of the work that has become known as the “700-Wall” – a 700 square-meter work along the train line between Berlin and Halle. This painting is most likely the largest graffiti mural created by a single person, and it was finished in four months.^[5]

Art Style

MadC's transition from street art to gallery work went through a transformation, as she explains "taking the street energy to a canvas and how spray paint translated differently onto canvas".^[6] She later moved on to 'Spectra' Paint, which had a transparent effect on her work with spray paint. She has also been known to use ink, watercolor, acrylic paint and acrylic markers in her work.^[7]

Her tagging style incorporates science fiction and fantasy elements, and is influenced by such artists as Vincent Van Gogh and the graffiti artist Dare (real name Sigi Koeding, who she collaborated with on his piece “Basel”).^[8] Wilde dedicated her piece “6313 – Here to Stay” to Dare.^[9]

Mad C also works with spray paints on canvas. At her first solo gallery in 2015, Night and Day, she showcased works such as “Nineteen Nineteen” and “Twenty One Zero Six”. These works had either a black or white base (symbolic of her night and day work required of her for tagging), and investigated “the relationship between overlapping colors, light, glass and calligraphic movement”.^[10] For her canvases she is transferring her philosophy of connecting single parts to one piece – background, foreground, lines and shapes. To create those works, MadC uses spray paint, transparent spray paint, ink, watercolor, acrylic paint and acrylic markers. She is painting on canvas as well as carton from spray paint boxes. http://www.graffitiprints.com/artist/madc/

After "700 Wall", MadC became ready to start building another aesthetic universe. This is exactly what she did with a new body of work, which was part of the Reflections show at Kolly Gallery in 2014 and The Tahiti Mural in Tahiti during the same year. The seemingly reduced aesthetics of MadC’s canvases and street artwork show a devotion to the exploration of roots of an entire subculture. MadC confronts us with the notion of addressing the essence of graffiti and street art cultures, in a way that highlights the importance of a never-ending (re)interpretation of the two concepts. A “traditional” subject matter is re-contextualized into a completely new visual language.^[11]

• ^[12]
• 2013, Le Mur Paris (France)^[13]
• 2013, 500Wall (Germany), Graffiti^[14]

Exhibitions

• 2011, "MadABC" - Pure Evil Gallery, London, UK
• 2011, "Between the Lines" - La Grille Gallery, Yverdon, Switzerland
• 2012, "Paper Party" - Galerie Le Feuvre, Paris, France
• 2012, "Team Rex" - Red Gallery, London, UK
• 2012, "layers" - 44309 Galerie, Dortmund, Germany
• 2012, "OVER THE EDGE" - 1AM Gallery, San Francisco, USA^[15]
• 2013, "Urban Contemporary Art" - Galerie Le Feuvre, Paris, France
• 2013, "Billboard Painters" - Galleri NB, Viborg, Denmark
• 2013, "Innovative Art" - Reutov Museum, Reutov, Russia
• 2014, "First Taste" - Wallworks New York, New York City, USA
• 2014, "Reflections" - Kolly Gallery, Zurich, Switzerland^[16]
• 2015, "Bits and Pieces" Wallworks New York, New York City, USA
• 2015, "Night and Day" 44309 Street Art Gallery, Dortmund, Germany^[17]

External links

• MadC MadC's own website
• MadC at hallenkunst.de

Bibliography

• Sticker City Thames & Hudson, London 2007, ISBN 978-0-50-02-8668-5.
• Street Fonts - Graffiti Alphabets from Around the World Thames & Hudson, London 2011, ISBN 978-0-50-05-1559-4.
• Graffiti and Street Art Anna Wacławek, Thames & Hudson, London, 2011, ISBN 978-3422071100
• Mural XXL Thames & Hudson, London 2015, ISBN 9780500239308

References

Wikimedia Commons has media related to MadC.