Max van Meeuwen

Max is pulling things out of the darkness. As in their dreams, so too in monotype printing. They start with an enormous, inked-up plate. They lean in to it, over it; before them a sheet of beautiful black. With a cloth or a Q-tip they then remove the ink to create the image, wiping it away. There’s a gentle violence to the image-making that comes from negation. Creation via inversion. And there’s an intimacy, too. The ink-sodden cloth and the ragged Q-tip are better known to the body for cleaning. The body’s nooks and crannies, its fleshy undulations and oozing orifices, these spots hold the secrets that are silenced with a swipe. Here, at the point of removal, and here in a moment of frozen movement – as in Caravaggio’s last painting The Matyrdom of Saint Ursula, where an arrow pierces Ursula’s chest – here is where the story is. ‘Prepare to meet God.’

 

The three-headed dog guards the gates of Hell. His heads represent the past, present and future. We’re standing before a portal or passage.

 

Zoom out. Max’s ink-black print is a single, sharp-lined slice of something much fleshier. It’s bodily, see? See how the image arises from the monstrous composition? The erotics of the cross-section?

 

In their graduation work, Max conjures huge, powerful bodies in motion. These bodies disrupt the landscape. Over 40 individual A0 prints form multiple works that crouch in the Rietveld garden. This reverse Frankenstein – whole before it became a composite – is unrecognisably feminine, depersonalised by scale. (text written by Clem Edwards)