Menu
The New Contemporary Art Magazine

Max Kauffman Dissolves Abstract Structures in New Watercolor Paintings

Oakland based painter Max Kauffman (covered here) seeks to find peace in his soft, loose watercolors that reflect chaos. This journey often leads him to colorful, abstract structures like houses, which he calls his "sanctuaries". In his artist statement, he says, "The world I portray is sometimes yours and mine and sometimes a more magical place – I call it future primitive. It is a potential path or maybe just a way to reconnect with more pure ideas of culture from our past. It is knowing empires crumble, but accepting the growth that emerges in the aftermath." His latest series of paintings for "Beautiful Squalor", now on view at Parlor Gallery in New Jersey, seems to find them in a state of visual disintegration. 

Oakland based painter Max Kauffman (covered here) seeks to find peace in his soft, loose watercolors that reflect chaos. This journey often leads him to colorful, abstract structures like houses, which he calls his “sanctuaries”. In his artist statement, he says, “The world I portray is sometimes yours and mine and sometimes a more magical place – I call it future primitive. It is a potential path or maybe just a way to reconnect with more pure ideas of culture from our past. It is knowing empires crumble, but accepting the growth that emerges in the aftermath.” His latest series of paintings for “Beautiful Squalor”, now on view at Parlor Gallery in New Jersey, seems to find them in a state of visual disintegration. 

Kauffman considers this new series to be a cross section between his older and newer direction. His previous paintings are usually clean, but these new images are muddied with blemishes of dark colors as if to suggest the passage of time and decay. The artist breaks down his architectural, graphic lines into what he calls portals or other worlds with a handmade folk art-like quality. As in his new watercolor and spray paint ink piece, “Pleasantries Aside,” sometimes the subject is broken down completely into pieces to appreciate its Aztec-inspired design. Another painting, “Dissolved Sanctity,” evokes the weaving and quilting of textiles as a sacred building is dissolved into geometrical patterns. Moving in and out of the subconscious and reality in this way, Kauffman’s series also looks at the duality of how we experience life.

Meta
Share
Facebook
Reddit
Pinterest
Email
Related Articles
Seattle based artist Kari-Lise Alexander's beauties have a norse-like quality true to her Scandinavian roots. They get lost in daydreams in her show "Inflorescence", opening Valentine's Day at Distinction gallery in Escondidio, CA. The title refers to the clusters of flowers they wear, drawn in a style inspired by the Norwegian folk art of rosemaling. Like these complicated twists of branches, her girls seek out and embrace eachother for comfort, melancholy in spite of their prettiness.
Daryll Peirce's new body of paintings is dominated by a strange, organic substance. Is it the folds of the brain's grey matter? A visualization of a molecular structure? An unearthly substance from the cosmos? These questions begin to pop up as you realize that Peirce is attempting to access something primordial and universal. When these shapes evoke atoms or asteroids, he reminds us that we are incredibly complex beings yet are still so minuscule in the grand scheme of the universe. He will be showing with Max Kauffman (full disclosure: Kauffman sometimes contributes to this blog) and Larissa Grant in their show "Going Native" at Campfire Gallery in San Francisco, opening on June 28.
England-born, Toronto-based painter Mark Liam Smith’s figurative scenes are overlayed with abstract shapes and rich colors. His mastery of the latter is even more fascinating when you consider that the artist is colorblind. (Check out the artist’s Instagram page here.)
There is an infinite complexity to nature. From sea shells, to the Milky Way galaxy, to the structure of human lungs, there are patterns that exist in everything around us. London based collaborators Kai & Sunny (previously featured here) have always been drawn towards such images created by nature. Opening Saturday, they will exhibit six new ballpoint pen pieces in "The Matter of Time" at 886 Geary Gallery in San Francisco. A more vibrant palette is applied in their new drawings, alongside hand-pulled monochromatic screen prints on copper and paper. Their works magnify and stylize the things that are plainly visible to us but often overlooked. Here, this would be the turn of the tides, represented in energetic, abstract pieces. 

Subscribe to the Hi-Fructose Mailing List