Max
Rain - Statement
I use clay, wood, and paper as mediums, with imagery rendered in
ceramic slips and stains, shoe and nail polish, and colored
pencils. I am heavily inspired by the late Renaissance
paintings
of artists such as Bosch, Bruegel, and Durer; the muralists and social
realists of the WPA; and communist propaganda posters from China and
the former USSR. However, the true source of my
imagery comes
from the everyday aspects of contemporary urban life. I
currently
reside in Hollywood, and I am fascinated by how seamlessly the
extraordinary, the horrific, and the domestic facets of humanity all
seem to blend together in this unique metropolitan
environment.
In my work, I attempt to create narratives that serve as snapshots or
captured moments of my chaotic surroundings.
In my recent
work, I create narrative tableaus by rendering a figure or
multiple figures on a specific ground. The figures are often
lifted from photographs I take while walking around the city, and their
function is to hint at an action or a story. The environments
behind them anchor the scene in a specific location or situation, and
are mainly perspectival views of urban architecture. The
figures
present in my work are always enacting something, but it is never
exactly clear what it is they are doing. Rather than
allegorical,
I see a majority of the narratives I create as anecdotes - they are
about social dynamics and features of human interaction, but they are
not necessarily a piece of a specific puzzle, a representation of a
moral lesson, or in service to an obvious greater conclusion.