November 8 - Deceber 15, 2024
Black, soft and seamless as a midnight polar sky. The smooth gray of slick-washed river stones. Fine precise lines in tonal gray, taupe, brown – the colors of dust, of raincloud, and granite, the blackened patinas of desert varnish on rock. The slender slice of a bright white line across the dark – as of an impossible white bird sewing a line across a stormy sky.
These paintings, with their painstaking precision of geometric shapes and intricate lines, feel like compositions of time: some meeting place between the geological evolution of mountains and the centuries long generational construction of cathedrals. They have the effect of stones, relics, or ruins. Solid. Freighted with a weight of memory and existence. These works appear as antidotes to a common state of fleeting, depthless, ethereal, soap bubble contemporary life, an opposite and remedy of the Gertrude Stein idiom, “There is no there, there.” Max Cole’s paintings, most assuredly, are filled with thereness.
Too often works of such minimal geometric abstraction might read as mechanical. A hard edge produced through tools or machines. But Max Cole’s precision is human, hand drawn. There is a breathing quality, a quality of touch, that emanates from even its most exact lines. This quality of essences, of Platonic forms, is achieved rather from care, from time, from practice, and from a life lived in ascetic service to art.
The paintings included in Max Cole’s new exhibition, Jacob’s Ladder, continue a process of breaking open the Greek Cross forms which she began exploring in 2015. Here the cruciform structure is
apparent but broken into and interrupted by tonal and linear blocks. In a deep, moody piece like Nightfall the form seems to sink away, falling into its dark background. This experience contrasts with Red Rock, where the form pops out at us, with its banded blocks of earth-toned lines, which seem to rise three-dimensionally off the canvas.
The naming of the exhibition is not incidental. For Cole, the story of Jacob’s Ladder provides both a personal and philosophical/spiritual touchstone. The story, of a great ladder in the sky appearing to Jacob, appears in all the Abrahamic religions. Cole recounts a vivid memory from her childhood of singing the old spiritual, We are climbing Jacob’s Ladder, at the top of her lungs with a group of her friends. For Cole, the story is important as a parable for the ascetic life which provides a pathway to heaven. She writes, “In this case, the art itself becomes the deed. In a large sense, art is the same journey... the painting itself becomes a step up the ladder. In my opinion, this is a component of all good art. A search for a way to get beyond the purely emotional, intellectual or decorative and which has always been my goal. This has been a lifelong journey.”
It is easy to understand then how these paintings, with their inherent depth and gravity, could only be what they are as the result of years of focus, study, and attention. Each gesture, each stroke, is the result of lived experience, is a kinetic expression of a life lived in pursuit of art as spiritual endeavor, simultaneously purposeful and joyous.
- Michaela Kahn, PhD
loan from
Night Fall II, 2023
acrylic on linen
39 x 33 in.
MAXC485
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Gray Dawn, 2024
acrylic on linen
39 x 33 in.
MAXC488
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$36,000
$36,000
Night Fall, 2023
acrylic on linen
39 x 33 in.
MAXC482
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Ninnescah III, 1978
acrylic on linen
79 x 92.25 in.
On loan from Tia Collection, Santa Fe, NM
Twilight, 2023
acrylic on linen
39 x 33 in.
MAXC475
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Red Rock, 2023
acrylic on linen
39 x 33 in.
MAXC472
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$36,000
$36,000
Red Dawn, 2023
acrylic on linen
62 x 52 in.
MAXC471
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$75,000
Dreamer, 2023
acrylic on linen
43 x 39 in.
MAXC402
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$36,000
Sandsong, 2024
acrylic on linen
39 x 33 in.
MAXC479
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$38,000
Misty Morning, 2023
acrylic on linen
62 x 52 in.
MAXC468
Click to inquire about this work
$36,000
$75,000
Echo, 2024
acrylic on linen
39 x 33 in.
MAXC460
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Angel’s Gates, 2023
acrylic on linen
39 x 33 in.
MAXC490
Click to inquire about this work
$36,000
$36,000
Alta Vista, 2023
acrylic on linen
19 x 16 in.
MAXC458
Click to inquire about this work
$18,000
Jacob’s Ladder, 2023
acrylic on linen
62 x 52 in.
MAXC466
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Mist II, 2024
acrylic on linen
39 x 33 in.
MAXC484
Click to inquire about this work
$75,000
$36,000
Reflection, 2023
acrylic on linen 39 x 33 in.
MAXC473
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Silver, 2024
acrylic on linen
39 x 33 in.
MAXC487
Click to inquire about this work
$36,000
Around Midnight, 2023
acrylic on linen 19 x 16 in.
MAXC459
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$36,000
Mist, 2023
acrylic on linen 19 x 16 in.
MAXC467
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$18,000
$18,000
Born: 1937 in Kansas
Lives and works in Northern New Mexico
Education:
1964 MFA, University of Arizona, Tucson 1961
1961 BA, Fort Hays State University, Hays, Kansas
Honors and Grants:
2009 Contemporary Artist’s Meeting with the Pope, Sistine Chapel, Vatican City, Italy
2005 Artist in Residence, The Joseph and Anni Albers Foundation, Connecticut
1995 Artist in Residence, The Roswell Museum and Art Center, Roswell, NM
1988 Research Fellowship, Indo-US Sub-Commission, U. S. Department of State for exhibition at the National Gallery of Fine Art, New Delhi and travel and study India
1987 Adolph Gottlieb Foundation Artist’s Grant
1986 Pollack/Krasner Foundation Artist’s Grant
1983 Visual Artists Fellowship, National Endowment for the Arts
1962-64 Fellowship for Graduate Study of Painting, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ
Selected Recent Solo Exhibition:
2024 Jacob’s Ladder, Charlotte Jackson Fine Art, Santa Fe, NM
2023 Breaking Day, Charlotte Jackson Fine Art, Santa Fe, NM
2022 Endless Journey, SITE Santa Fe, Santa Fe, NM
2021 The Bounding Circle, Charlotte Jackson Fine Art, Santa Fe, NM
2018 Crosswinds, Larry Becker Fine Art, Philadelphia, PA
The Long View, Charlotte Jackson Fine Art, Santa Fe, NM
2015 Black Magic, Charlotte Jackson Fine Art, Santa Fe, NM
2013 Meditations, Kunstation, Sankt Peter Koeln, Germany. Catalog. In collaboration with Kolumba.
Show Cover Hide: Schrein, The Esthetics of the Invisible Kolumba Erzbischofliches Diozesanmuseum, Cologne, Germany. Catalog
Salt Marsh, Pampas, Dog Star and Fourteen Drawings, Larry Becker Contemporary Art, Philadelphia, PA
2012 Beyond the Fourth Dimension, kunstgaleriebonn. Accompanied by a book of twenty drawings and handwritten observations on the nature of art. Published by Verlag Weidle
Beyond, Charlotte Jackson Fine Arts, Santa Fe, New Mexico
To the Line, Meis van der Rohe Haus, Berlin. Catalog
At the Edge of Meaning, Galerie Wenger, Zurich. Brochure with writing by Stephen Zaima
2011 Drawings, Galerie Lindner, Vienna, Austria
Quintessence: Max Cole over Time, kunstgaleriebonn, catalog
Terre Firma, Max Cole: New Paintings, Haines Gallery, San Francisco, California
Max Cole, Paintings, Galerie Lindner, Vienna, Austria.
2010 Light and Line, New Paintings, Larry Becker Contemporary Art, Philadelphia, PA
Paintings, Galerie Schlegl, Zurich, Switzerland. (with Jens Trimpin)
Selected Museum and Public Collections:
The Achenbach Foundation, Fine Arts Museums, San Francisco, CA
Albright-Knox Museum, Buffalo, New York
The American Center, New Delhi, India
Berkeley Art Museum, Berkley, California
Chiat Foundation Collection, New York, New York
Collection Hanny Frick, Schaan, Lichtenstein
Daimler Collection, Berlin, Germany
Dallas Museum of Art, Dallas, Texas
Denver Museum of Art, Denver, Colorado
Everson Museum, Syracuse, New York
FAI –Fondo per l’Ambiente Italiano, Villa Menafoglio, Varase, Italy
Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, San Francisco, California
Grunwald Center for Graphic Art, UCLA, Los Angeles, California
KiCo Foundation, Bonn, Germany
Kolumba Diozesanmuseum, Cologne, Germany
Kramarsky Collection, New York, New York
Kunstraum Alexander Buerkle Collection, Freiburg, Germany
Kreditanstalt fur Wiederaufbau, Frankfurt, Germany
La Jolla Museum of Contemporary Art, La Jolla, California
Lenbach Haus, Munich, Germany
Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, California
Louisiana Museum, Humlebaek, Denmark
Metropolitan Museum of Art, Graphics Department, New York, New York
Microsoft Collection, Seattle, Washington
Minneapolis Institute of Art, Minneapolis, Minnesota
Mondstudio Collection, Germany
Muse’ed’art et d’histoire Neuchatel, Switzerland
Museo d’Aarte Moderna Contemporanea di Trento e Rovereto, Italy
Museum der Schoenen Kunst, Szepmuveszeti
Muzeum, Budapest, Hungary
Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, California
Museum of Fine Arts of New Mexico, Santa Fe, New Mexico
Museum of Modern Art, Graphics Department, New York, New York
Museum Geganstandfrierkunst, Landkreise Cuxhaven, Otterndorf, Germany
Museum fur Konkrete Kunst, Ingolstadt, Germany
Newport Harbor Art Museum, Newport Beach, California
Nora Eccles Harrison Museum of Art, Utah State University, Logan, Utah
The Anderson Museum of Contemporary Art, Roswell, New Mexico
The Panza di Biumo Collection, Varese, Italy
Rossi/Matttioli Collection, Milan, Italy
Samlung Alison and Peter W. Klein, Eberdingen-Nussdorf, Germany
Sammlung Reinking, Hamburg, Germany
Samlung Rosskoph, Kunstraum Alexander Buerkle, Freiburg, Germany
San Diego Museum of Contemporary Art, La Jolla, California
Santa Barbara Museum of Art, Santa Barbara, California
Stadische Galerie im Lenbachhaus, Munich, Germany
Staadliche Museen zu Berlin, Kupferstichkabinett, Berlin, Germany
Tel Aviv Museum, Tel Aviv, Israel
Tia collection, Santa Fe, NM
The University of Arizona Museum of Art, Tucson, Arizona
Utah Museum of Art, Salt Lake City, Utah
Van Der Heyht Museum, Wuppertal, Germany
Weatherspoon Art Museum, Greensborough, North Carolina
Museum of Fine Art, Budapest, Hungary
Vatican Museums Contemporary Art Collection
