Max Schaffer
all clear
09 Mar - 21 Apr 2018
MAX SCHAFFER
all clear
09 March – 21 April 2018
Into this house we're born
Into this world we're thrown
Like a dog without a bone
An actor out on loan
Riders on the storm
The Doors, 1971
The chequered dish-towel hangs perfectly folded in the kitchen. The curtains are drawn. It is after six o’clock. The newscast starts. The storm is looming.
Max Schaffer ventures with his solo exhibition “all clear” into uncertain terrain with cleverly reflected but slightly cheeky implicitness. A space-capturing installation of new textile works illustrates the theme that ‘domestic bliss is undergoing radical change’. This time the artist, whose style explores conceptually and formally the charged relationship between everyday culture and cultural discourse in a multi-layered interconnection of appropriations and references, uses conventional dish-towels as the basic material of his exhibition not as a readymade, but as an item of encroachment. Using batik technique with black dye, the textiles associated with conservative domesticity directly mirror the characteristics of the complete exhibition concept in a subtle undertone: something is out of whack here, the uncontrollable, the unknown, the other has upset the natural order and is now asking for an unavoidable confrontation with something that is not disclosed, an event that can no longer be reversed.
“Let's show Irma that we shoot first” was a Facebook post that was made when Hurricane Irma swept over the US state of Florida in 2017. Fifty-four thousand people “liked” the post. “Don’t shoot at the storm” countered the police finally, explaining that the bullets would come back (as well as an accompanying infographic), their direction change is incalculable, the consequences are unpredictable and that a boomerang effect would occur.
Domesticity offers no refuge from global progress. The grid can't hold back the colour from following its own system: a circular one like a cyclone that inexorably draws its own circles.
As conforming as the initial material appears to be, as different is the end result after batik dying classic dishcloths. Despite the same colour, same lacing and same application time the “tie dying” technique, once attributed to ‘counter’ culture is unpredictable. A subjection appears impossible.
Associations with the emancipatory strategies of the counter-culture or the openness of new and alternative models of life as conceived at present in many places as an attack on the conservative values of society are illustrated by the work and are associated with a critical resonance of the latest socio-political developments in Europe and the United States.
“Die Schoten dicht machen” (Batton down the hatches) affirms the cubic spheres of various materials which are formally reminiscent of nest boxes but have no entrance or exit. Hermetically sealed, they defy the vortex but they don’t offer real refuge, either inside or outside.
But the lock appears just as useless as the frontal attack, the uprising is created internally: the personal is always political. The alleged infiltration of social norms has already occurred several times by now, as an appropriation, but still a recognition in response to a cultural hegemony, which in itself sped out of control long ago. Max Schaffer questions the unbearable in the so-called native culture in a subversive act and has papered the walls with it, a vivid, immersive visualisation of constantly changing weather. According to the artist, the picture “all clear” is a reputed all clear signal, but it will be a long time until we can breathe a sigh of relief.
- Marlies Wirth, March 2018
all clear
09 March – 21 April 2018
Into this house we're born
Into this world we're thrown
Like a dog without a bone
An actor out on loan
Riders on the storm
The Doors, 1971
The chequered dish-towel hangs perfectly folded in the kitchen. The curtains are drawn. It is after six o’clock. The newscast starts. The storm is looming.
Max Schaffer ventures with his solo exhibition “all clear” into uncertain terrain with cleverly reflected but slightly cheeky implicitness. A space-capturing installation of new textile works illustrates the theme that ‘domestic bliss is undergoing radical change’. This time the artist, whose style explores conceptually and formally the charged relationship between everyday culture and cultural discourse in a multi-layered interconnection of appropriations and references, uses conventional dish-towels as the basic material of his exhibition not as a readymade, but as an item of encroachment. Using batik technique with black dye, the textiles associated with conservative domesticity directly mirror the characteristics of the complete exhibition concept in a subtle undertone: something is out of whack here, the uncontrollable, the unknown, the other has upset the natural order and is now asking for an unavoidable confrontation with something that is not disclosed, an event that can no longer be reversed.
“Let's show Irma that we shoot first” was a Facebook post that was made when Hurricane Irma swept over the US state of Florida in 2017. Fifty-four thousand people “liked” the post. “Don’t shoot at the storm” countered the police finally, explaining that the bullets would come back (as well as an accompanying infographic), their direction change is incalculable, the consequences are unpredictable and that a boomerang effect would occur.
Domesticity offers no refuge from global progress. The grid can't hold back the colour from following its own system: a circular one like a cyclone that inexorably draws its own circles.
As conforming as the initial material appears to be, as different is the end result after batik dying classic dishcloths. Despite the same colour, same lacing and same application time the “tie dying” technique, once attributed to ‘counter’ culture is unpredictable. A subjection appears impossible.
Associations with the emancipatory strategies of the counter-culture or the openness of new and alternative models of life as conceived at present in many places as an attack on the conservative values of society are illustrated by the work and are associated with a critical resonance of the latest socio-political developments in Europe and the United States.
“Die Schoten dicht machen” (Batton down the hatches) affirms the cubic spheres of various materials which are formally reminiscent of nest boxes but have no entrance or exit. Hermetically sealed, they defy the vortex but they don’t offer real refuge, either inside or outside.
But the lock appears just as useless as the frontal attack, the uprising is created internally: the personal is always political. The alleged infiltration of social norms has already occurred several times by now, as an appropriation, but still a recognition in response to a cultural hegemony, which in itself sped out of control long ago. Max Schaffer questions the unbearable in the so-called native culture in a subversive act and has papered the walls with it, a vivid, immersive visualisation of constantly changing weather. According to the artist, the picture “all clear” is a reputed all clear signal, but it will be a long time until we can breathe a sigh of relief.
- Marlies Wirth, March 2018