The poetics of reuse: Madeline Isakson

Waste is transformed into sculptural furnishings with a brutalist image: on view, the “monolithic debris” of the Launch Pad finalist at WantedDesign Manhattan 2023

Madeline Isakson
Madeline Isakson

Madeline Isakson, seen in the context of Launch Pad (a section of WantedDesign Manhattan) at the Javits Center in New York, is a young artist and designer whose work involves careful investigation of consumer culture.

Isakson’s creative vision – with a BFA in Furniture Design at California College of the Arts and an MFA in 3D Design at the Cranbrook Academy of Art – focuses on the recovery of waste materials, especially polystyrene packing, to transform them into functional sculptures for the domestic environment. Crates for televisions or microwave ovens, for example, become aesthetic enclosures in which to insert elements like cushions and LED lighting, giving the final “product” a different meaning.

EPS [Expanded Polystyrene] collection by Madeline Isakson
EPS [Expanded Polystyrene] collection by Madeline Isakson

In Madeline Isakson’s hands one of the most highly polluting materials, which takes up almost 30% of the space in dumps all over the world, lends itself to exploration that can lead to a new life, generating provocative works like the EPS [Expanded Polystyrene] series: art-design pieces in which the trace of the original forms remains visible. An intentional choice, to forcefully express the concept of reuse.

EPS [Expanded Polystyrene] collection by Madeline Isakson
EPS [Expanded Polystyrene] collection by Madeline Isakson

“We are all aware of the problems created by our culture of consumption,” the young artist-designer says. “The objective of this series is to rethink the possibilities of what was considered ‘trash’ in the past, to create a new domestic aesthetic capable of revealing beauty and humor in the banal.”

EPS [Expanded Polystyrene] collection by Madeline Isakson
EPS [Expanded Polystyrene] collection by Madeline Isakson

The pieces in the EPS [Expanded Polystyrene] series are made with assembled packaging segments. The object is then transformed in a mold and produced in cast aluminium, one of the most recyclable materials.

Scraps thus take on a new aesthetic dimension, shifted and recontextualized in everyday useful articles like seats and totemic lamps inspired by Brutalism and Constructivism: collectibles, eclectic furnishings, light sculptures, defined by the artist herself as “monolithic debris.”