MAX BOOK
b. 1953
BIOGRAPHY
Max Book first attracted attention in the 1980’s for his dark, expressive and monumental paintings. He has long been considered one of the most acclaimed and accomplished painters of his generation. As a painter, Book has developed a unique and experimental visual language mixing paint, pasted collage, graffitti influences, strange characters and contradictory objects within his work
In the 1980s, he was part of the art group Ibid together with, among others, Jan Håfström, Håkan Rehnberg and Johan Scott, and founded the Waldagruppen with, among others, Eva Löfdahl and Stig Sjölund. He is often called one of the "foremost painters of postmodernism", and has had a large number of highly acclaimed exhibitions.
Max Book has exhibited at International Artists, PS 1, New York, Art Cologne in Cologne, Modern Museum, Stockholm, Forum, Zurich, World's End in Copenhagen, ASF Gallery, New York, Center Culturel Suedois, Paris. Norrköpings Konstmuseum, Horsens Konstmuseum i Danmark, Lunds Konsthall, Sundsvalls Museum, Liljevalchs Konsthall, Galleri Magnus Karlsson, Galleri Engström, Norrköpings Konstmuseum, Forum, Zürich, Künstlerhaus Bethanien, Berlin. Malmö Konsthall, Kunst RAI, Amsterdam, ARCO, Madrid, Rooseum, Malmö, Konstant 90, Leningrad and Prins Eugens Waldemarsudde. His work can be found in the collections of the National Museum in Stockholm, the Gothenburg Museum, the Norrköping Art Museum and the Modern Museum in Stockholm.
“He sees basically no contradiction between nature and culture, an approach that has meant that his images have been infiltrated by motifs from popular culture's prop stores. There has never been any pure painting, and this is underlined by the fragments of masonite and all sorts of rubbish that his 80s painting is full of. His images are based on an oily, dark background that is punctuated by shimmering clouds of dust and occasional flashes of light. The impression is almost overwhelming, but at the same time one is struck by the fact that the light phenomena he recreates may as well stem from a personally anchored experience of the Nordic night landscape as from visual memories of news reports from bombed-out Baghdad or Belgrade, "
ARTWORKS
