Margaret and Eliza, 2023, found rugs.
Powers of the House (tableau vivant), 2023, video, 7 hours 55 minutes. Projected for the exhibition Ambits: The Greene Fellowship Exhibition, Redline Contemporary Art Center, Denver.
Thumbscrew and the Stake, 2023, projected video, 12 minutes.
Postcards, 2023, engraved pearlescent cardstock, 5 editions of 20, photos by Brenda Magsamen.
“Max Maddox is represented in the exhibition by a suite of performance-oriented
projects that test the parameters of public space while advancing his questioning of
"inherited conceptions about what art can be," the discourse about it, and where and
how these conversations might occur. The work extends his investigation of temporary,
object-based interventions onto the surfaces of urban light posts, railings, concrete
plinths and the like that commenced in Philadelphia in 2006 and then continued in
Denver in 2021. These recent performances were initiated by his discovery of two
faux-fur rugs in a dumpster. The effort required to carry the unwieldy pair to his nearby
studio immediately disclosed their uncanny volatility and potential to be read
simultaneously as blanket, cloak, fleece, and dwelling. In addition to encouraging the
formation of unexpected personae, they elicited spontaneous interactions with
passers-by, the immediacy and authenticity of which could never be replicated in the filtered context of an institutional venue. Hauling the rugs and enveloped inside
them—with one as a mat and other as a kind of garment or tarp—generated a
repertoire of unscripted behaviors that Maddox began to capture on video as well as
still photographs, sometimes with the assistance of his friend, Brenda Magsamen. Powers
of the House (tableau vivant), 2023, presents approximately 90 minutes of footage shot
late in the afternoon on a median strip, documentation that is stretched by slow motion
to a duration of nearly eight hours. Through a gap in this makeshift shelter, the viewer
can occasionally glimpse Maddox peeking at the camera on the tripod before him but
unable to see most of the activity around him. Maddox becomes a creature, a
"caveman," an anonymous "philosopher-poet," as well as a blank screen onto which we
and the public project myriad assumptions and fears. The video includes one
exceptionally telling passage where a motorist offers Maddox two bottles of water, a
moment that hints at the scope of the charged interactions generated by Maddox's
use of the rugs, including inquiries with law enforcement that were resolved by Maddox
pointing to the camera as the justification for his activity. The time-lapse footage of
Thumbscrew and the Stake (2023), filmed during a single visit to Washington Park,
provides a more comprehensive sampling of the variety of conduct and sites Maddox
tested, including footage of him disappearing and reappearing in the crowd like the
grim reaper no one seems to notice. The divergent treatments of time offered by the
two videos complement each other while also withholding the sense of actual
durations experienced by Maddox while performing, a reminder that the real--and
irretrievable--experiences of this work occurred in the medium of the shared space of
the public commons.”
-Richard Torchia, curator of Ambits, the Greene Fellowship Exhibition
-Richard Torchia, curator of Ambits, the Greene Fellowship Exhibition
These small light shows feature remote controlled smart LED’s in laser engraved boxes affixed to the city plinths, lightpoles, and bridges with rare earth magnets. Different arrangements of the lights were installed around central Denver over a period of 3 days and 3 nights. The public seemed to mostly accept these mysterious apparatai which have no clear purpose, the boxes might have intimated a technological mystery that might dismissed as civic infrastructure. Possibly they seemed as small glimpses into the future, anticipations of some next social control: a block chain or materialized cloud; a surveilance device or an intermediary between us and the network, matters that are perhaps none of our business or beyond our expertise.
Wagner Group is an ongoing project that approaches the revivalist conservatism of the new cold war by creating an encounter between the public and a set of modified objects. The purpose is to test the boundaries of free speech in the context of anti-Russian sentiment, and to break the codes of conduct customary to such theaters. Aiming to put the obscenities of ideology in the cross-hairs and its puppetry on display, the work is a pantomime of newspeak that “forgets itself” on its way to delivering its propaganda.
Bodka, 2023, enamel, bottles, led lights.
Forgotten Heels, 2023, engraved shoes, South Broadway, Denver, CO.
Passenger, 2023, engraved doll, Denver bus.
Forgotten Purses, 2023, engraved purses with engraved tokens.
Lost Shoes, 2023, engraved shoes.
Twin Stalin, 2023, engraved stones.
Vaviela Fan Club, 2023 24 engraved Magna Tiles, acrylic paint.
Grievance, 2023, spray acrylic, found plywood, attachments.
Solicitors, 2023, spray acrylic on plywod, wood stake, attachments, featuring Denver citizens.