Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Max Yawney. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Max, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today Let’s start with the story of your mission. What should we know?

I am an artist. The work I do employs diverse media, sculpture installations, paintings, photographic works and drawings.
In the 1990’s, I began to understand that I felt that art could offer a more immersive and exciting experience than what I was seeing. The idea of a picture or a single image was limiting to the variations of possible images that can be located within a pictorial space. I also realized that the idea of communicating via art was impractical as so many viewers will have so many interpretations.
I decided to dismiss the idea of a subject matter in lieu of an experience for the viewer.. The result has been the project I’ve been working on since 1996, I use two different images or objects that are seemingly unrelated and situate them closely., there is typically an inch or so of space between the paintings and photographic works and typically a about a foot between the sculptures.
The idea here is akin to an archeological dig and upon finding diverse objects the viewers are left to assess this unique situation without direct knowledge. The discovery process is stimulating to the human mind I’m especially interested in the parsing out of
differences. It’s similar to two different humans speaking to one another or a mountain and a sunset sky…
The project ultimately doesn’t present a subject or a picture but rather an opportunity to be situated with a poetic condition.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

It seems that communication through art is an enduring and practical pursuit as it adds to available resources humanity has to understand itself.
The task for me has been to find the most compelling manner to realize that communication, while also assessing what is valuable to communicate. Do personal feelings /expressions have any value to the world in general? Do specific grievances or political views have value to humanity in general?
I decided that it appears as though a work that allows a person to consider the world of distinctions around them and ultimately place themselves in that space of immediate reality is a viable form of communication.
I began to read how others had tackled this problem , mostly via theory, so I began work on a project of making image based diptychs in many permutations back in 1996.

Are there any books, videos, essays or other resources that have significantly impacted your management and entrepreneurial thinking and philosophy?

Yes, while I was in Graduate school studying painting, I was reading essays about the minimalist artists, there were all types of notions put forward in those magazine articles and books. The most important to me was the idea that the art work was similar to a stage and that the viewer was the actor creating the scene.
Another book was Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s. “Phenomenology of Perception”, he put forth that the body and its understanding of its space and the space of things around it is a complicated case of relating to phenomena and the intellectual triggers associated with that experience.
Jean Baudrillard was another interesting contribution with his notions connecting simulacra to idea development. The alterations in the communicated and the recommunicated -the fallout and what remains. This awareness of the process of communication also helped me to understand that direct communication of the intention of direct and precise communication is a fools game. It also linked me to the idea of using two diverse images which are activated as the viewers look back and forth at each image, as in simulacrum activity the repeated and restated ideas( images) have a fallout of information , similar to two people speaking and then repeating the thought again and again until it’s less recognizable as the principle idea .

We’d love to hear the story of how you built up your social media audience?

I don’t have a particularly strong social media presence, but I have found that the social media space is a give and take condition like speaking with another person . If you engage others in a space of commonality and share your ideas within that space as well as acknowledging other people’s ideas , there is organic growth in a network .
Just being a bullhorn and not absorbing that which is around you seems antithetical to realm of social media. This relates to my project of two images interacting so as to be a situation. In the social media sphere it’s not always just the content that’s important but also -the fact, of the communication that has real meaning on a human level. In my project the content of each painting or image is less relevant than -the fact of the situation as a site of potential experience for a viewer – perhaps akin to an archaeologic discovery.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://maxyawney.com
• Instagram: maxyawney100
• Facebook: Maxyawney
• Soundcloud: The unglued radio workshop

Image Credits

Max Yawney