Schmidt Contemporary Art: Friday, 31 October 2008
Max Cole
October 31 - November 29, 2008
Rception for the artist Friday, October 31, 6:00-8:00 PM
Whatever one may write about Max Cole’s paintings will, out of necessity, fall short of the mark. Whatever one sees in Max Cole’s work will only be increased by the next encounter. Whatever one wishes to sum up as a capsule view becomes impossible as they change not only with the light of day, but also with the mood of the viewer. The word enigmatic comes to mind, but that fails as well for as mysterious as the paintings present themselves through their reductivist pallate and remarkable sensitive mark making they are not mysterious at all - they are clearly a result of a predetermined aesthetic, enacted by a practiced hand guided by an experience mind that thinks linearly and outside of the box at the same time.
Max Cole will tell you that her paintings are essentially about light, and in doing so she is talking about the light of day. While that may be how she sees it, the constant observation that pulls here into the studio every day, I view the work more as enactments of the light in her mind which seems down to earth in day to day conversation, leaving you to wonder how she is even able to translate such basic instincts through such a seemingly controlled system into something which even on first encounter seems more eternal than of any particual moment in her or our visual history.
No matter what words I try to find to describe her immaculate painting the only thing I ever can do is come up with a generalized context in which quite frankly is rendered meaningless the moment one encounters the actual work. The paintings in this exhibition are remarkable not only for their continuation of a well defined aesthetic, but for their remarkable abilty to begin again with something new and unexpected. That I find to be a remarkable achievement for one who has been painting seriously for almost half a century.
October 31 - November 29, 2008
Rception for the artist Friday, October 31, 6:00-8:00 PM
Whatever one may write about Max Cole’s paintings will, out of necessity, fall short of the mark. Whatever one sees in Max Cole’s work will only be increased by the next encounter. Whatever one wishes to sum up as a capsule view becomes impossible as they change not only with the light of day, but also with the mood of the viewer. The word enigmatic comes to mind, but that fails as well for as mysterious as the paintings present themselves through their reductivist pallate and remarkable sensitive mark making they are not mysterious at all - they are clearly a result of a predetermined aesthetic, enacted by a practiced hand guided by an experience mind that thinks linearly and outside of the box at the same time.
Max Cole will tell you that her paintings are essentially about light, and in doing so she is talking about the light of day. While that may be how she sees it, the constant observation that pulls here into the studio every day, I view the work more as enactments of the light in her mind which seems down to earth in day to day conversation, leaving you to wonder how she is even able to translate such basic instincts through such a seemingly controlled system into something which even on first encounter seems more eternal than of any particual moment in her or our visual history.
No matter what words I try to find to describe her immaculate painting the only thing I ever can do is come up with a generalized context in which quite frankly is rendered meaningless the moment one encounters the actual work. The paintings in this exhibition are remarkable not only for their continuation of a well defined aesthetic, but for their remarkable abilty to begin again with something new and unexpected. That I find to be a remarkable achievement for one who has been painting seriously for almost half a century.
Schmidt Contemporary Art
615 North Grand, St. Louis, MO 63103
314 575 2648
615 North Grand, St. Louis, MO 63103
314 575 2648
posted by Bill Barrett at 4:13 PM
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