Peripheral
eries
Max Savold
agazine
Contemporary Art
readers something about your future projects? How do you see your work evolving?
we would like to pose a question about the nature of the relationship of your art with your audience. Do you consider the issue of audience reception as being a crucial component of your decision-making process, in terms of what type of language is used in a particular context?
Presently I have around 40 pieces in progress that I’m working on. I don’t have any specific thoughts about the evolution of my work, but I hope to be open to new ideas and new directions to avoid falling into a repeatable routine or pattern, and thus leading to choices that are dogmatic, rather than in the best interests of the artwork. I post my work on instagram fairly consistently, as I appreciate the visually communicative nature of the app. My instagram nom de guerre is dot_org.
I actively try to not consider the audience at all. It changes it. The greatest success I’ve had, in terms of artistic creation, are things where I tell myself I won’t show it to anyone. It’s too personal, it’s not relatable. Eventually I will show it to someone, and the fact that it’s personal is what makes it so relatable. It's not about a general thing, it’s an example of something, and through the details of that example, one is able to convey more subtle information. I do my best to not share an in-progress work with someone, because by their observing it, it changes it. It’s like the thought experiment of Schrodinger’s Cat. The gist of it is there is a cat in the box and there is also poison in the box. There’s a 50/50 chance the cat ate the poison. Until you look in the box, the cat is both dead and alive - nothing is concrete yet. If you look in the box, and the cat is dead, then you’ve killed the cat, because it was alive (and dead) before you looked. A better example is with texting. Say you’re fighting with someone over text. Your phone is in your pocket. They text you back but you don’t take your phone out of your pocket. At that moment they are apologizing to you or they are yelling at you further. Until you look you are in this grey area. Once you look it becomes final. Other people looking at my work does that too. I see it through their eyes and therefore the choices I make could be colored by the fact that I’m trying to make the work what they want to see. This can be beneficial, however, because if you’re stuck on a piece and you show it to someone, it will change and maybe that change will let you know what direction to go in. One could get lost wondering about other people. If you try to please someone, at the expense of what you want, you’re not going to succeed. If you do what someone wants instead of what you want, there’s a chance that dishonesty will come out in the piece. That dishonesty keeps it from being what you think the other person wants, so they aren’t happy and neither are you. It’s best to just do what you want, people will like it or dislike it all the same, but at least you’re happy, and you’re being true to yourself.
Currently I am experimenting with using playing cards to direct my work. This is inspired by Jerry Gretzinger, whose work is too amazing and intricate to be briefly summed up here (watch “Jerry’s Map” on Vimeo, it is extraordinary), but he had customized a deck of playing cards to direct what he did. Here is a brief breakdown of my cards: Each card has 2 directions. The number tells which artwork you work on (5 means you pick the 5th one down in the pile). The other direction (the card suit) tells what you do to that artwork (use paint, use the life magazines in a certain stack). It’s a fascinating way to force you to make choices you didn’t know you wanted to make. A lot of time I’ll draw a card and I’ll get an artwork I hadn’t been thinking about working on. Then I’ll have to use a material I wasn’t necessarily thinking of using on the piece. I’m still working on it and fine tuning it, but so far it’s been really interesting. If I feel like working on a specific piece I won’t draw a card for it, I’ll just work on it. One future project involves a comic book I made with E.A. Henson a few years ago. He wrote the words and I created the artwork for it (it’s all mixed media collage). It took 3 years to create the single issue, from concept to finalization. It’s name is Every Murder Ever, and we are now trying to figure out what to do with it. Thank you for this opportunity to discuss, and show, my artwork. I appreciate the thoughtfulness of the questions, and I found the self reflection gained in answering the questions helpful in terms of a creating a richer understanding of my own work. An interview by Josh Ryder, curator and Melissa C. Hilborn, curator
Thanks a lot for your time and for sharing your thoughts, Max. Finally, would you like to tell us
peripheral.arteries@europe.com
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