Max Gottlieb
Berkhamsted, HERTS
Nobody is visually naive any longer, we are bombarded by images.Abstract art makes sense of the age of the image.
MessageMax Gottlieb
Artist Biography
Seeing comes before words.
A great director said to me once, it’s either right or it isn’t.
That I can relate to in terms of what balance is, firstly it’s about intuition then technique to achieve it.
Max is strongly influenced by his work in film and TV, designing a project to help tell the story.
The story is different each time, by using locations,architecture,colour and texture Max helps craft the story.
The more one looks in detail the more variation, association and atmosphere one finds.
Max is equally intrigued by the notion of how one might recall, for instance, a TV series.How a seemingly linear set of images and events form into a cohesive memory.
With this series of paintings entitled ‘Balance’ Max uses a recurring theme of the circle to anchor and reference this idea of recalling a series of events not just a single thing or image.
It’s equally a question as to whether stories are circular or complete and parts come into and out of focus, information becomes close up or recedes in scale and relevance.
The idea of balance comes from how and if all disparate parts hang together and make a whole.
The first question Max always asks of a Drama, or a of its component parts, is
Statement
Max Gottlieb
Artist Statement
Max Gottlieb has worked as a film production designer for over thirty years.While he has been painting for the last three years his provenance has been his experience in interpreting films visually and the expertise with which he collaborates with constructors in realizing film productions.
Max Creates Abstract paintings with acrylic on canvas combining gestural marks with disciplined hard edge shapes and symbols. Using varied tools such as mop,large hand made rubber scrapers, pallet knife and squeegee Max explores organic and gestural marks that have their own integrity. Contrasting these using masking tape and stencils with spray paint and brushes to for hard edge and more symbolic shapes.So contrasting two different styles, organic versus plastic.
Colour is very vibrant in Max’ painting.A feature that has emerged from experience in film where sets can be lit to achieve striking vibrancy.Contrasting muted flat colour fields with textured bright and dayglo shapes.
Researching and drawing on ipad combining photo ref 3d programs and drawing programs max develops ideas and imagery that are the backbone of ideas explored on canvas.The final work always follows its own integrity in resolving composition, colour and shape while drawing on the researched work
Max work is inspired by current and contemporary ideas of colour and image and how we communicate and depict the world.While ultimately evoking atmosphere this and his film work gives Max a vast vault of images to examine.Colour combinations, current forms influenced by media and our online world,emogies,symbols,text abbreviations, iconography and the very nature of how we view the world largely from 2D devices. Many Titles are based on these ideas.By utilising gestural mark making in contrast to precise graphic shapes and symbols Max explores the dicotomy between the analogue world and the digital, the physical and the virtual.Drawing on influences from Turners most abstract later paintings to computer imagery and pattern questions the process itself of how we communicate and what is knowledge.
Certain motifs reoccur, the use of stripes can evoke Candy stripe, wrapping paper or hazard symbols, all very man made.They are a series of questions composed and contrasted.
Having worked in film for over thirty years Max felt the need to look in a more detailed way and to shift the perspective somewhat to refresh his focus and ask certain pressing questions about the nature of things.While filming is a very collaborative process achieving large scale drama he wanted to go back to basics and alter the discipline.
While using symbols and associated meaning Max is also aware that a painting is a flat object based on its surface in a similar way a film is a flat version of a 3D world.Also aware that the visual presence is taken on its own merit as much as the inner meaning as in film where ‘the look’,the costume, the make up and the chiaroscuro is an important social currency.
So these painting are questions about the nature of depiction itself and the techniques used.Aiming to express the mix of chaos and balance, natural versus plastic, the order of things and how they coexist.
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