Tim Maxwell "Weltschmerz"
Rare
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RARE presents an exhibition of new pen & ink drawings by Tim Maxwell entitled Weltschmerz. The show marks the artist's second solo turn at the gallery.
Underpinning Maxwell's work is the German concept of "Weltschmerz" - psychological pain caused by the sadness that occurs upon realizing one's own weaknesses are caused by the inappropriateness or cruelty of the world. The mindset implied by this term defines the journey Maxwell has endured in order to resurface as a working artist years after thinking he would never again pick up a pen to draw.
Like Renaissance and Baroque Period artists, Maxwell finds inspiration in Greek and Roman mythological figures, which he "un-constructs" or flays and then reconstitutes in a style that uniquely melds street and tattoo art. Through this process, he heightens the figures' allegorical implications of timeless sorrow that parallel his own feelings of personal distress and anguish.
Spending nearly sixteen hours a day standing in front of a single wall in his studio, Maxwell laboriously draws in a nearly miniaturist manner. He works each piece just short of its "breaking point" so that the integrity of his highly complex imagery is retained. Every mark becomes its own internal space, each bundle of lines a mini-vignette or landscape, each plane its own world, with the whole evolving into a cosmology of interconnected parts.
Maxwell received an MFA in 2004 from the School of Visual Arts in New York and a BFA in 2002 in Painting and Drawing from Pennsylvania State University. He has had solo shows at Derek Eller Gallery (New York) and Marvelli Lab (Brooklyn). His drawings are currently the subject of a one-person exhibition, titled TABULA RASA, at Charest-Weinberg Gallery in Miami. Maxwell's first solo show at RARE took place in 2006.
Media
Schedule
from November 17, 2011 to December 22, 2011