About the work...
a self portrait, 96 x 84 inches
Starting in 2011 Max Presneill has almost exclusively shown his paintings in groupings referred to as The Cloud, under the single title The Captain's Tale. This 'cloud' contains multiple canvases that act, by the location of their installation and in reference to each other and the sequence of their placement, as extended narratives that are inclusive of source materials taken from autobiographical sources, the Internet, literature and the history of art, amongst other places. They exist in a fluid interchangeable relationship that allows them to be renewed with each showing, to have some removed and some replaced, with no set number of pieces and no continuous 'members' within the grouping - in line with changing focal points of interest to the artist, to establish new ways of reading the material thus reflecting ongoing concerns and engagements.
Utilizing sources from the Internet, photographs from my own life, art historical references, multiple other resources and intuitive decision making when painting, I reflect upon the relationship between fact and fiction as well as past and present. Within reconstructed histories and mythologized experiences, the forged connections that play between remembering and invention act as considerations of the nature of reality and identity.
The narrative elements allude to situations, both specific and general, factual and imagined, that place the importance of the act of painting within a set of existential, self-affirmed constructions of reality and value. Isolated, de-contextualized or reconfigured, they float in a river of uncertainty, like our own reflection in a mirror, somewhat familiar but not quite our ‘self’, what is seen differing from what is felt. The hermetic subjective experience and shared cultural expressions constantly oscillate between understanding and illegibility, with a sense of melancholic loss and moments of celebration. In their weird and awkward way they babble, vying for attention amongst the clamor of voices in the torrent of information, their glossolalia making for a discordant collision of styles and influences as a further isolating and erasing of distinctions. They exist within the gaps between things.
In the end they are the remnants and evidence of the cognitive, problem-solving nature of painting and the human experience, or at least mine…
Utilizing sources from the Internet, photographs from my own life, art historical references, multiple other resources and intuitive decision making when painting, I reflect upon the relationship between fact and fiction as well as past and present. Within reconstructed histories and mythologized experiences, the forged connections that play between remembering and invention act as considerations of the nature of reality and identity.
The narrative elements allude to situations, both specific and general, factual and imagined, that place the importance of the act of painting within a set of existential, self-affirmed constructions of reality and value. Isolated, de-contextualized or reconfigured, they float in a river of uncertainty, like our own reflection in a mirror, somewhat familiar but not quite our ‘self’, what is seen differing from what is felt. The hermetic subjective experience and shared cultural expressions constantly oscillate between understanding and illegibility, with a sense of melancholic loss and moments of celebration. In their weird and awkward way they babble, vying for attention amongst the clamor of voices in the torrent of information, their glossolalia making for a discordant collision of styles and influences as a further isolating and erasing of distinctions. They exist within the gaps between things.
In the end they are the remnants and evidence of the cognitive, problem-solving nature of painting and the human experience, or at least mine…
