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TOUGH LUCK

Max Brenner

8.11.-23.12.2022

Scenes like from action movies. The titles of the pictures: “Cyborg De-captivation,” “Drowning Village,” “Invisible Standoff”. A time machine breaks roars towards us. Aliens stare at us. The world appears mysterious, chaotic and dangerous. It threatens to become unhinged. A fortune teller lays out tarot-like cards – with images of paintings that we find again in the exhibition. Abstract works, with deliquescent colors, associative to open up, similar to a pipe chess test. The question raised is how we experience ourselves, how we deal with uncertainties and threats, how we want to and can shape the future.

Brenner’s images reflect concentrated, competing, sometimes intertwined feelings: fear, hope, longings in a world with manifold turbulences, existences, contradictions, simultaneities and disturbances.

Max Brenner works multi-medially, paints with acrylic, oil, oil-pencil. Stormy abstractions on canvases which he has previously – as an underground – designed with print-. He creates strong contrasts, bright, flickering colors, with rhythm, depth and multiple dimensionality. They are detailed and complex compositions, irritating, uncomfortable, mysterious narratives.

Life does not give us a promise of happiness. No matter how hard we try, we experience it only in moments. Often by chance, without having done anything for it ourselves. In fact, we can only feel happiness because we also know unhappiness. Uncertainty, danger and suffering are also part of life. “Tough Luck”.  

Max Brenner grew up in South Tyrol, he lives and works in Vienna. Since 2017, he has been studying at the University of Applied Arts.

Available Art: