Seeking to ascribe labels, to forcibly place works and artists within categories, groups, and movements, is usually an activity of scant significance and is sometimes outright damaging. This is true with the work of Max Cole, presented here in an extensive exhibition (a catalogue, featuring essays by Kim Wauson and Ralf Christofori, accompanies the show). In these paintings, marked by their somber palette (gray, brown, white, black) and exquisite mass of detail, only lengthy observation leads one to anything resembling a complete understanding of the deceptively simple compositions. What emerges is a sort of musical phrasing, an alternation of signs and gestures; visualized sound has found its way into this American artist’s work for some forty years. Many other influences have marked Cole’s path, including art from the East and action painting, and more abstract concepts such as obsessive repetition in both space and time. Each completed canvas manifests this latter concept quite literally, involving up to sixty layers of paint. In this extremely personal, in some ways intimate work, Cole sets up a dialogue with the support, in search of a perfection that calls to mind Zen ritualism in its balance of strength and delicacy.
Translated from Italian by Marguerite Shore.
