MAX FRINTROP
Mad Max
26.11.2022 > 28.01.2023
Reviews: Artribune, Exibart, La Lettura
A+B Gallery presents Mad Max, Max Frintrop’s third solo exhibition in the gallery spaces, that starts Saturday Nov. 26th, and lasts until Jan. 24th 2023.
The artist is exhibiting a new series of pictorial works on canvas, all in large format, as well as an entirely new edition of ten medium-format watercolors. Through the exhibition, the germinative process of Frintrop’s works is highlighted and originated from direct experimentation on paper and is then translated through the use of another technique on canvas.
Frintrop found the Mad Max inscription near his studio and decided to use it as the guiding image of the exhibition. The apocalyptic reference, the universality of an intimate place, and the pun on his own name are just some of the reasons that make this title appropriate for the occasion.
Simplicity and multiplicity, particularly for iconographic and symbolic references, are elements of his painting that act on our identity without triggering drama or thought when we follow the watery flow of pigment on canvas. This approach is central in Frintrop’s practice.
The pictorial works underline new formal interests in Frintrop. The rupture of space, a recurring theme in his practice, occurs with the addition of new techniques during the process.
Interested in astronomical physics, the artist introduces some elements that recall visions apparently related to the investigation of gravity. The outcome is a compositional complexity given by the use of new pictorial tools, which are capable of making some transformations visible.
Solid masses change state to liquid and filamentary masses are in continuity with the structural elements, but at the same time disjointed from a chromatic point of view. The canvas becomes a place of changes and tension (both in its material and perceptual components) of absence and presence of gravity unknown to us.
The collaboration that has developed over time between A+B Gallery and the artist counts three solo exhibitions over ten-year, participation in European fairs and the awarding of the Premio Pittura XXI at Artefiera 2022, as well as the organization of site-specific exhibitions, like L’avventura, Die Mit Der Liebe Spielen, a group show with 14 German artists, in 2014 still unpublished in Italy.