Max Keene’s work is a work of process: of coating, drawing, printing, flipping, toning, and rotating. It’s a structured routine of tinkering in a basement studio, a tea-fueled investigation into the space’s materials and textures, its patterned tiles, cracked cement, wood panelling, and exposed pipe. Sometimes, the work feels like an invitation. I often find myself peering in as I might while walking down the street, noticing a shadow moving beyond an illuminated window. A soundtrack is implied, combining the comforting hum of the furnace, steady footsteps overhead, water rushing through the pipes.
In Foundation, two figures pose at the edges of the room, their bodies crafted from pipes and stucco. On the walls, large cyanotypes are the background for drawings on cellulose. Cobblestones, aces, and spades cascade into one another, superimposed with silhouettes made up of serpentine belts. This layering—a drawing on cellulose placed over a background—echoes another process-based practice: hand-drawn animation. Not unlike the artist, the animator’s process begins with a storyboard, some preliminary sketches and a timeline. For Keene, it’s a reminder to mix the emulsion, test the muslin, bleach out the cyan, and tone with instant coffee. The work is one of repetition and manipulation, of hundreds of gestures broken down into detail.
Throughout the exhibition, Keene continues to construct his distinctive world, built with an interconnected system of pulleys and pipes, streetlamps and electrical sockets, cobblestones and baseboards. A collection of novelty coins, an array of UV lights, and a work in progress, taped to the wall, lay the foundations. If part of Keene’s work is about process, about probing the materials around us, the other is about the joy of investigation. There is a humour in Keene’s work that makes this joy obvious, like the sculptures’ poses—are they sitting? falling? melting?—as well as playful motifs. That gleeful experimentation calls to mind the photographic explorations of Sigmar Polke. An alchemist, he revelled in misusing photographic processes, often leaving chemical experiments up to chance. It was about the process as much as the outcome.
The works in Foundation encourage an appreciation of everyday materials, of the beauty in the ubiquitous. Ordinary pipes and pulleys are brought to life. Textures are imagined anew. If the works are static, movement is implied. Everything is abuzz: he is the artist, animator, and alchemist all at once. Traces of his process, his manipulations and explorations, remain for the curious eye. Sitting in his studio, in the glow of the UV, the enthusiasm is palpable. In the basement, something is always afoot.
Text by Kate Nugent
