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Max Cook-Long
Artist Statement
"Iris Triptych" presents a disrupted narrative about the artist's personal, and somewhat compulsive, relationship with social media ecosystems. Reflecting the informational fragmentation of algorithms that emphasise heightened emotions to maintain engagement, each painting obfuscates its meaning. Using the format of short form video content, the message of each work is hidden in the numbers attributed to the Like, Comment and Share "buttons", the post captions, the colour palettes and the songs implied to be playing over each work. In line with the theme of the fragmentation of information, "Iris Triptych" is a shortened title as each panel has a separate title, containing two segments of the sentence, "My doctor and I have concluded that beaming a variety clip show of human evil directly into my eyes before I have even tried to get out of bed is deeply damaging to my mental health." The naming convention and presence of song titles encourages the viewer to engage with the work outside of the space of the canvas.
Biography
Max Cook-Long is a Toowoomba-based artist who works primarily with painting, drawing and mixed media. Their development has been self-directed up until 2022, when they commenced a Bachelor of Creative Arts and Community Wellbeing, majoring in Visual Arts at the University of Southern Queensland. Max's practice juxtaposes painting techniques informed by the Old Masters, queer history, pop culture, folk horror and esoterica. They have an appreciation for the strange and unusual, and how the weird can be wonderful.
Influences
Amos Gebhardt, Kyle KM, Francisco Goya, Julia Robinson, Tim Silver, Artemisia Gentileschi, Damien Hirst
