Agitator is an ongoing public art project that approaches the revivalist conservatism of the new cold war. The purpose is to test the boundaries of free speech in the context of anti-Russian sentiment, and to break the codes of conduct customary to such theaters. Aiming to put the obscenities of ideology in the cross-hairs and its puppetry on display, the work is a pantomime of newspeak that “forgets itself” on its way to delivering its propaganda.
Forgotten Heels, 2023, engraved shoes, South Broadway, Denver, CO.
Passenger, 2023, engraved doll, Denver bus.
Forgotten Purses, 2023, engraved purses with engraved tokens, portable bathrooms, Denver.
Lost Shoes, 2023, engraved shoes, various locations in downtown Denver.
Twin Stalin, etched stones, a travelling exhibition in Denver, CO, 2023.
Alternate Menus, 2023, engraved acrylic.
Vaviela Fan Club, 24 engraved Magna Tiles, acrylic paint, 16th Street, Denver.
Grievance, spray acrylic, found wood, attachments, various locations in Denver, CO.
Solicitors, 2023, spray acrylic on plywod, wood stake, attachments, featuring Denver citizens.
Hats and Chains is inspired by my favorite game as a boy – Chutes and Ladders. There is no point to the game, really it's a matter of luck. But to this day it always gets me choked up when I get the long ladder or the even longer chute. We all know what it means to have “something to hang your hat on” or to get “a feather in your cap.” We even know the subtle difference between being “on the hook for something” and being “hooked on something.” Human relationships are reflected in objects, but hooks and feathers don’t mean anything as such. We are truly neurotic, that's what objects show us. They externalize power relationships without even having to do or be anything in particular. They are empty vessels; by always remaining symbolically unfaithful they make a clandestine home to our mercurial ideas.
This piece was motivated by my impression that many of us in the art community bend over backwards for “feathers in our caps,” where the system of rewards is fueled by fetishization. With the fetish there is no “there there,” only a fantasy that the rewards of art making are “spiritual” and life-redemptive, where self-sustenance is portrayed as an obstacle to awakening society and ourselves. The purpose is to show how we use abstract universals in our profession to motivate the life of the art market. With Hats and Chains I wanted to literalize an obscene conjunction, an ideological system that is like many others in using objects and their symbolization to motivate the exchange of power and its abdication by those subject to it.
Wanderlust in the Midnight Oil, 2022, chains, spoons, oil can, found crank, oil on panel, attachments, 32 x 32.
Mezannine, 2022, faucet, extruder part, chain, oil on panel, attachments, 24 x 32.
Manjiro’s Passage, 2022, arrowheads, seashell, chainmail, furniture tacks, oil on panel, 16 x 16.
A Public Installation of Art Objects
Somewhere Around Here is an uncommissioned public art project using temporary attachments such as magnets, where the artist “leaves something behind” at a carefully selected location. The opportunity is to produce art for spaces unmarked by “difference,” where creativity can collide with the hyper-controlled realities of the public sphere. These objects point out the freedom of art outside the usual confines of market exchange and the gallery, and confront these forces with chance human connections characterized by surprise and wonder. The works suggest radical freedom through dissonant human connections and through signals of the decay of capitalism.
Tap, 2021, found faucet, feathers, nylon, attachments.
Five Points neighborhood, Denver.
Troopers, 2021, candy mould.
5-points neighborhood, Denver.
Gold Plated Post, 2021, found plate, screw.
Installed in the 5-points neighborhood, Denver.
Cracked Bat, 2021, found baseball bat, bolts.
Golden Triangle district, Denver.
Victories, 2021, trophies, bricks, attachments.
War Memorial, Colorado State Capitol, Denver.
Eyes Wide Shut, 2021, found costumes.
Civic Center Park, Denver.
Surveyor, 2021, found toy, magnet, attachments.
Larimer Square, Denver.
Monument, 2021, teeth moulds, magnets.
Larimer Square, Denver.
Peeps, 2021, found peeps, wine decanter, magnet.
Millenium Bridge, Denver.
Perfectly Good Scissors, 2021, found scissors, magnet.
Museum of Contemporary Art, Denver.
Extra Baggage, purse packed with chains.
Cherry Creek Neighborhood, Denver.
Bowlers, 2021, trophies, light stand, magnets.
Pedestrian Bridge over I-25, Denver.
Lost Purse, 2021, found purse, glow stick.
Union Station, Denver.
Downgrade, 2021, found phone, duct tape, embossed label.
Union Station, Denver.
Pinwheel, 2021, found ornament, solar powered motor, magnets, acrylic sheet, attachments.
Installed at RedLine Contemporary Art Center, Denver.
Degentrification, 2021, belt, fanny pack, straws.
Five Points Neighborhood, Denver.
Second Pinwheel, 2021, found toys, pinwheel, acrylic sheet, solar powered motor, attachments.
Larimer Square, Denver.
Second Tap, 2021, found faucet, plastic jewels, nylon, attachments.
Five Points Neighborhood, Denver.
Mermaids with Treasure, 2021, found toys, plastic jewels, glass bowl, machine wheel, magnet, water.
Larimer Square, Denver.
Presentation, 2021, found towel rack, dog collar, magnet, attachments.
Highlands Neighborhood, Denver.
Chains on Bridge, 2021, chains with magnets and attachments.
Confluence Park, Denver.
Lost Drone, 2021, found drone, case.
Union Station, Denver.
Dirty Little Hand, found doll hand, magnet, attachment.
Larimer Square, Denver.
Puzzle, 2021, found metal puzzle, magents, ball bearings.
Millenium Bridge, Denver.
Radiant Birds, A Suite of Objects by Max Maddox
Curated by Raymundo Muñoz and Anthony Garcia
Alto Gallery, April 8-30, 2022
A great hunter, naturalist, and journalist, John Audubon was perhaps the greatest bird painter of all time and their greatest witness. My only intention with Radiant Birds was to respond to his prints in Birds of America with all their complexity, to identify the love and violence within this masterpiece of art, science, and nature in rare harmony. My penwork brings a little “systematic chance” into the picture, a solitary game with a few architectural templates, and my pairings are meant to plushly adorn these prints, to memorialize the birds they portray with a few bird baths that anticipate some work to come “in the field.”
During Audubon’s time, before the invention of photography, he shot and killed these birds that he clearly loved in order to render them still enough to draw. He was an unrivaled observer but also a proud slave owner and a tragic positivist. I returned to this bird guide prompted, in part, by the theorist Baudrillard who drew lines around nature and knowledge that allowed me to think critically about post-capital freedom, and how to reach toward strictly unknown futures guided by nature and chance.
A few hand tools found their way here as well, reminders of old forms of labor, which we today leave behind to look at the birds. The hardest part of this project was to sit for a day and actually birdwatch, and it dawned on me how much “doing nothing” was forbidden by my habits, with a special kind of irony as my preparations for this show preoccupied me. This month, a window of time will be opened to the birds.
Bird Mirrors, 2022, steel plates, PCB transfers, bowls, plates, marble, construction beam, water, attachments.
Flamingo, 2022, bird guide, ink, watercolor, frame.
Snowy Egret with Birdbath, 2022, bird guide, ink, watercolor, frame; steel plate, steel bowl, chain, construction beam, attachments.
American Robin, 2022, bird guide, ink, watercolor.
Pine Sisken with Silver Spoons, 2022, bird guide, ink, watercolor, frame; silver spoons, seeds, epoxy.
Connecticut Warbler with Brass Perch, 2022, bird guide page, ink, watercolor, frame; found assemblage, brass rod, copper ring, epoxy, attachments.
Cardinals with Augur’s Feeder, 2022, bird guide page, ink, watercolor; ceramic bird, game blocks, dried meal worms, seashells, acrylic sheet, laser print on transparency, wire rack, steel plate, ball bearings, attachments.
Ruby-Crowned Kinglet with Bird Mirrors, 2022, bird guide page, ink, watercolor, frame; steel plates, PCB transfers, brackets, towel rack anchor, lens, metal bowl, epoxy, Rummikub pieces, attachments.
Great Blue Heron, 2022, bird guide page, ink, watercolor.
Brown Pelican with Sniper’s Glasses and Bird Filters, 2022, bird guide page, ink, watercolor, frame; Civil War era sniper’s glasses, enlarger filters, nails.
Richardson’s Owl with Augur’s Perch, 2022, bird guide page, ink, watercolor, frame; stereo casing, stained glass, chisel handle, magnet, ball bearings, hourglass, shell, brass clip, epoxy.
Birder’s Shelf, bird guide pages, stereo casing, binoculars, service bell, stained glass, chain, attachments.
Sparrow Hawk and Broad-Winged Hawk with Bird Mirror, 2022, bird guide pages, ink, watercolor, frames; steel plate, PCB transfer, magnifying glass handle.
Audubons Caracara with Hammer Perches, 2022, bird guide page, ink, watercolor, frame; hammers.
Great Gray Owl, 2022, 2022, bird guide page, ink, watercolor, frame.
Sharp-Shinned Hawk with Screwdriver Perch, 2022, bird guide page, ink, watercolor, frame; screwdriver.
Flamingo Mirror, 2022, steel plate with PCB Transfer.
Lifespans
Part of Chromatic Cogitation: Rhythm Reboot
Curated by Rosie Gordon-Wallace
November 5- February 13, 2021-2
Redline Contemporary Art Center, Denver
We find ourselves in a triage unit, a sort of ill-equipped improvised purgatory where we get our check-up. Alienated, we get our snotty diagnosis by a nurse perhaps gone mad, but who, today, is our god. A lone oxygen tank represents the precious privilege of medicine. The antibody cocktail — and then the strange reflection of the virus in the vaccine, not afforded everyone — points to our class. Catharsis, treatment, cure, vainly we question our need for it; the freedom medicine offers we feel should be naturally ours. What poison pill, after all, will get us through the gates? What perfume will outlast our lifespan? Who, after all, will exit the triage the same way they came? Who, on the other hand, will be ushered into the hospital’s gauntlet, and why? Of which we know nothing, medicine has never seemed so political, so decisive, so other-worldly, so full-grown. Medicine, our fatherly liberator, with its violent love spreads its shadows on the walls, picturing our hysteria while pointing our distant way through a dream.
Delivery, 2021, air tank, golf caddy, tire chains, padlocks, steel plate, golf tee, linseed oil, enamel.
Rapid Test, 2021, thermometers, covid test tubes, diy crystals, compass, obsidian, erlenmeyer flask, acrylic sheet.
Stages of Reconciliation (pictured with Plato's Pharmacy), 2021, hand towels, wine rack.
Crutches (pictured with Plato's Pharmacy), 2021, window bars, crutches, rope, attachments.
Plato's Pharmacy, 2021, horsefly, resin, nitrous oxide cartridges, cartridge crackers, led strip, stingray spines, enlarger filter, rock flower perfume, epoxy, steel plate.
Station, 2021, wasp, resin, phlebotomy tubing, lens filter, plumbing parts, diy crystals, pasta maker parts, hypodermic needles, metal cup, cocktail shaker, magnet with leds, battery, modified table, epoxy, steel plate with attachments.
Heart, Body, and Mind, 2021, PET scans reproduced on transparencies, clear clip boards, magnets, hooks, attachments.
20 minutes, hourglass, hook, enamel.
Throne, portable toilet, ceramic tiles.
Darkness, 2021, teeth model, oxygen mask, oxygen tubing, metal post with attachment, tissue case, artificial eyelashes, epoxy, zip tie.
You and All Your Friends, 2021, veterinarian's needle.
Staying Power, 2021, grab bar, kid’s handcuffs.
Golden Opportunity, 2021, tie, door knob, tie clasp.
Sequencer, 2021, air filter, fishing line with hooks, velcro.
Prince, 2021, hospital gown, toilet paper hook.