Entrée opens this autumn with new works by Berlin-based artist Max Paul. In his first international solo show, Paul presents a series of nighttime observations of classical sculptures photographed in various European cities. As it turns out, many of the naked bodies – once customary in public sculpture, now curiously out of fashion – have been covered up with protective nets and beset with spikes to ward off wildlife. Through his lens, Paul re-eroticizes the figures, emphasizing points of aggression and vulnerability. As Kristian Vistrup Madsen writes in the accompanying publication “these are pictures about constraint, about tension; about establishing a way of looking that transforms what is looked at”.
Max Paul’s practice spans a range of different media, but often develops through his interest in the popular imagery of art and architectural history and the traces this leaves in the urban fabric and people‘s minds. He is interested in how a city‘s collective self-image is created through both random and intentional decisions in architecture, vandalism and city branding. His work conveys subconscious layers of references to classical and romantic archetypes. In his work he has linked the fragments of a demolished Sex-Kino to the fragments of the Parthenon frieze, and has explored the resemblances and links between archeology and art with that of contemporary makeup, such as compact powder, foundation and bronzers. Recently he has shown the surrealist visions of Berlin by the artist Werner Heldt (1904-1954) alongside the equally surreal visions by major contemporary real estate developers.
