Independent 20th Century 2026

At this year's Independent 20th Century, SEPTEMBER and Uffner & Liu are pleased to present a solo booth of historical works by Reginald Madison (1941–2026). Bringing together paintings spanning nearly four decades alongside a seminal sculpture completed in 2026, the presentation highlights the remarkable output of Madison's practice while reaffirming his place within postwar American art and the Chicago Black Arts Movement. In conjunction with Independent 20th Century, SEPTEMBER and Uffner & Liu will publish a 230-page hardcover monograph of Madison’s practice.

A self-taught artist from an early age, Madison built his practice through curiosity, observation, and lived experience rather than formal artistic training. As a teenager, he discovered a discarded box of paints along Chicago's Lake Shore Drive—an unexpected encounter that sparked a lifelong commitment to artmaking. While supporting his young family through shifts at U.S. Steel's South Works plant, he saved enough to spend a year traveling through Europe, studying the collections of Paris, Munich, Madrid, Venice, and Copenhagen. The lessons of industrial labor, European modernism, and the improvisational spirit of free jazz became enduring influences on his work.

Applied with rough brushes, thick rags, and improvised tools, the surfaces of Madison’s paintings accumulate a dense, matte texture that foregrounds the physical act of painting. Rather than working from preparatory sketches for either his sculpture or his paintings, Madison developed his compositions intuitively, allowing each gesture or move to determine the next.

Central to the presentation, Red Top (2000) exemplifies Madison's mature painting practice. Suspended between figuration and landscape, the work is built from a spare vocabulary and successive layers of oil paint. It is one of many compositions (including Atonal Drift, which is also presented here) wherein Madison positions an oval-shaped head turned on its side, resulting in a flat, mask-like form. In the case of Red Top, however, the delicately traced eyelashes and the forward gaze of the subject are emotively arresting. The arc of the landscape resembles the crest of a hilltop on which the disembodied head is cradled.

Acting as a sculptural counterpart to the paintings on view, Ohmm (2024-2026) demonstrates how Madison translated his visual vocabulary into three dimensions. Constructed from salvaged wood, the work combines geometric structure with his instinctive assembling of found parts. Importantly, Madison worked with the forms as he found them, puzzling their existing shapes together rather than cutting them to impose a fit. Madison’s sculptures are perhaps most directly drawn from his deep interest in boundary-pushing jazz music; Ohmm is one of a handful of three-dimensional sculptures he created as an homage to Sun Ra. Here, the totem of repeated forms resembles an ascending chorus of figures. Created during the final years of the artist's life, Ohmm underscores the sustained importance of Madison's material-driven process.

Together, these works offer a focused survey of Madison's practice across nearly four decades, highlighting the richness of his visual language across painting and sculpture. At a moment of renewed attention to artists associated with the Chicago Black Arts Movement, the presentation offers an opportunity to reconsider Madison's distinctive contribution to postwar American art.

Editor’s Note

In conjunction with Independent 20th Century, SEPTEMBER and Uffner & Liu will publish a 234-page hardcover monograph of Madison’s practice. The publication will feature an essay by art critic Seph Rodney and an interview with Chicago historian Rebecca Zorach.