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Best known for his outstanding post-apocalyptic folk tales, Max Kauffman is an artist who doesn’t fear taking risks or traveling the longer road to get to an idea for his work. Kauffman’s paintings shift deftly between abstraction and figuration by blurring the distinction between real and imagined, conscious and unconscious. The suggesting and exploding forms presented in his amazing body of work invite the observer’s own imaginative references and conjure the joyful mess of living. Max’s pieces encompass a sense of uncontrollable chaos and a folkloric approach to their subject matter. He investigates how we draw comfort from inanimate objects and habitats that we occupy, letting them shape us.
Kauffman was born in 1981 in Chicago and grew up in South Bend,IN. He earned his Bachelor of Fine Arts in Ceramics, with a minor in Anthropology from Arizona State University in 2004. He has participated in many solo and group shows across the United States as well as Italy, Canada , Mexico, and Israel. His work has been featured in publications like Boom,Vice, Beautiful Decay, Its Nice That, and Supersonic Electronic, to name a few. Max has collaborated with Mountain Dew, Nike, and Arbor on projects, and has written for Hi Fructose on and off since 2008.
He currently lives in Denver with his cat daughter, Lady Drew.
Architecture factors heavily into my work. As a way to tell a story but also as the basis of things- the walls we form in our minds, the memory of a magic place from childhood, and recently to look at heritage. Using a mental and emotional map of places, people, and sometimes events I create images to the best of my recollection. They appear more as patterns than a concrete thing.
More info:
Website: https://www.kauffmanartistry.com
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/wittybanterism