The work of Max Cole feels elemental. Like the clean white bone of a deer found on a trail, a few chips of ancient mosaic uncovered buried beneath a street, or the crystalline crust of salt on the shore of a drying lake, these paintings seem composed of the essentials, of what is left behind when all noise and complication is stripped away.
Pared down to the barest foundations of visual language, Cole’s palette is primarily black and white, with shades of gray and neutral tans or raw canvas sometimes coming through. The most characteristic element of her painting is the fine and precise making of tiny marks across her canvases, layers upon layers of razor-thin lines. In the micro view these lines are like small stitches, or even the most elemental rudiments of human language (a vertical mark, counting
one). In the macro view one sees this accumulation of marks build, weave, aggregate, and flow across the canvas, forming larger tonal patterns of horizontal bands.
"Pale Horse," on view September 5-28, 2025, p
