Max Tilmann
MNRG, Portugal
Hardcover 

This man is a painter from Dusseldorf, Germany and has studied at the Art Academy there.  I see similarities to Basquiat and Keith Haring here.  The shock value of the images is horrific.  There are references to every crime known to humanity and social problem.  The way they are framed in a brutish painting style lends the subjects a sterile anonymity that frees us from the pain of witnessing, enduring.


Does compassion go dry here?  I feel in the "brutal" lines the brush did not jump, deviate, or dry out with any sort of anxiety. What message is expressed in the muted variance and the calmly nuanced movement of the hand and the brush?  These minimal compositions with their simple yet conscious application guide us gently through the carnage of human interaction, inequality, and vapid reflection...

He draws the subjects of senior citizens undergoing sexual slavery, dying abortions and smokestacks with the calm innocence of a Anesthetized Philip Guston stripped of his agenda.  We see not the gritty Don Juan in Basquiat, no excitement, no romanticism.  In here we see an exploration into a deeper kind of ice.

-A.$.


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