Artists

Max Frintrop

Press release

Exhibition Text by Nils Emmerichs

listen to this

This painter makes things easy both for himself and the viewer. By allowing any interpretation, he reveals the cunning indifference that grants equal validity to all perspectives. This stance is legitimate, as even in erasing traces, the creative process unfolds. But precisely for this reason, Max Frintrop makes it more challenging for the interpreter to engage with his work. What sort of listening is called for here? Is it about tracing his engagement with inspirations and forebears? Isn’t it characteristic of every painter to help us rediscover the works of other painters, regardless of whether they explicitly refer to them? We shouldn’t take Frintrop’s work literally; instead, we should immerse ourselves in a rhythmic process, following the traces of the imaginative journey that emerges from the work itself. Painting can only be understood as a process of exploration if the artist is willing to lose his way.
Twentieth-century painters were right to engage with the dissolution of the image. This approach results from the collision between the instrumentalization of art and its claim to autonomy, a claim it successfully established through Modernism. Relevant art always maintains an intimate relationship with the fundamental issues of its time. The irritation of not understanding painting has now become a phenomenon in search of explanations. This has led to a decline in the popularity of painting in the traditional sense.