Forme non référencée is a work in plywood made up of two parts: the yellow part is painted with a glossy colour while the purple, pink, grey and white section is coated in acrylic and a copper spray paint. The thickness of the wood allows him to straddle flatness and depth; its cut and suspension in two parts form an interplay with the wall and create a contour against it.

As Jordan Madlon’s title suggests, this work attempts to escape from a specific sphere of reference. Formal or symbolic references are constraints which the artist wants to elude, in order to offer a formal language which depends solely on its pictorial situation. The notion of style is important to him and leads him to constantly evaluate his work. The signs which he creates are used to enrich the artistic vocabulary, such as letters from the alphabet and other elements making up a language. Forme non référencée is another one of these elements – a specific sign taken from a pictorial language.

Born in 1989, in Guadeloupe.
Graduated from l’École Supérieure d’Art et de Design | The Higher School of Art and Design of Saint-Étienne, France.

In 2011, Jordan Madlon was awarded his National Diploma in Visual Arts at the Ecole Supérieure d’Art et de Design in Saint-Etienne. In 2012, he spent one term on an Erasmus exchange at the Freiburg campus of the Akademie der Bildenden Künste de Karlsruhe, where he was taught by Leni Hoffmann, an artist well known for his urban performances. Hoffmann offered him the chance to join his class again after gaining his Higher National Diploma in Plastic Expression (DNSEP) in Saint-Etienne in 2014, but he decided to join Helmut Dorner’s class instead. Dorner’s work, which is considered to be more painting than pictorial art, is indeed more familiar to him and has allowed him to hone his specific style.

Jordan Madlon’s artistic sphere is connected to the story of abstract painting which explores forms and the means of expression that these forms evoke, seeking to present specific objects linked to this experience and knowledge. The forms which he creates arise from the work, the painting itself, the watercolour strokes, and the outcomes he produces after cutting. For him, the choice of materials is not motivated by their effects but by economic or theoretical constraints. His series entitled seing (formerly meaning the mark a person puts on a letter to guarantee its authenticity, giving us today’s term ‘to sign’) includes, for instance, cut-outs of thin aluminium sheets, which allows him to highlight the possibility of an autonomous painting in the material form it takes. The object is always painted on both sides to allow the viewer to appreciate the painting in its entirety.

In 2016, Jordan Madlon took part in the exhibitions Regionale16 in Freiburg (Germany) and von meinem iphone gesendet at the Fleischmarkthalle in Karlsruhe (Germany). In the same year, his work was also showcased at the exhibition sous couvert de peinture at the Jean Brolly gallery in Paris, presenting, most notably, Seing 0 and Brouillon, plywood forms painted in acrylic and gouache.