Max Máslo↓

About the work

I Wasn´t There

Max Máslo pursues graphic arts and illustration. To him, the struggle integral to the grueling graphic techniques is at the same time a leisure hobby that provides a useful contradiction in relation to visual arts. The “catenation” of this discrepancy is then transferred to attempts at more conceptual approaches, such as working with an archive.

His dissertation employs the methods of amateur historiography to track the changes in social remembrance of the events accompanying the socalled 1990s’ Velvet Revolution in his homeland. He subsequently reflects them against personal mythology and failure in the construction of his own utopian dreaming. The advantage of this is that social memorial practices are not limited to history books but have a broader performative dimension, where historical artifacts can be easily manipulated and analyzed. However, there also surfaces the melancholic vanishing point of unsatisfactory starting points of “engaged art” and attempts at reconsidering them.

Simulating artistic research is an ideal way to fulfill the artist’s skepticism. All that remains is the shallow work with the archive and the effort to dig up the legacy of the archive turn and its misuse for the sake of a “good cause”.