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<\/a><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\nMax Dean, Still \u2013 Agnew Clinic, 2020, pigment print on archival paper19 \u00bc x 28 \u00be in<\/p>\n\n\n\n
<\/a><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\nMax Dean, Meeting the Team, 2020, pigment print on archival paper, 19 \u00bc x 28 \u00be in<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In the centre of the room the visitor walks through the parts of the disassembled sculpture. When assembled the sculpture appears as a large boulder, in virtue of a painted tarpaulin cover. Underneath are several layers of construction. At its very heart sits a replica of the prostate surrounded by twigs and plastic plants. These are deposited in a bin which is cut down in the middle and placed on wheels. The outside of the bin is covered in bouquets of plastic flowers. And around this are placed a couple of domes, again on wheels. The inner dome is comprised mainly of draped clothes, and the outer one of books and cardboard boxes, along with other domestic items. There is online a video featuring Dean and his assistant, McAlister Zeller-Newman, taking off the cover and wheeling the sculpture apart. This room-sized sculpture, Dean tells us, represents his tumor. Clearly it does so as a psychological phenomenon rather than physically, reflecting the fact that the show\u2019s theme is Dean\u2019s coming to terms with the disease.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
<\/a><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\nInstallation view of Max Dean: Still – Living Through Cancer and Covid<\/em> at Stephen Bulger Gallery<\/p>\n\n\n\n Through the exhibition Dean relates his personal journey with cancer, and as such the work is autobiographical. He is upfront about his disease and is willing to pose in uncomfortable situations in the photographs, e.g., in Suppository<\/em>. He leaves little distance between the viewer and himself in this respect. Why is he so candid? Certainly, in conceptual art the body often plays a central role, and indeed that is true of other works by Dean. But more generally, one needs to appreciate that Dean\u2019s art and his life cannot be separated.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Max Dean, Suppository, 2020, pigment print on archival paper, 19 \u00bc x 28 \u00be in<\/p>\n\n\n\n Even a cursory survey of his career reveals that he is constitutively compelled to make art. The creative process is innate to him. He incessantly turns his life into art. The only way I understand this compulsion is by relating it to Friedrich Nietzsche\u2019s notion of art as life affirming. As he saw it, artists are intoxicated by life \u2013 an intoxication (Rausch<\/em>) through the senses. The artist as such instinctively aims at life, embraces it. For Nietzsche this drive defines the artist \u2013 the artist\u2019s exercising of his will.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Like living itself, Dean understands art to be inherently risky. An introduction to a previous exhibition (I\u2019m Late, I\u2019m Late<\/em> at Stephen Bulger Gallery, 2016) reads: \u201cCome and join Dean\u2019s journey to the edge of his jungle, ride along perilous mountain roads, walk to the edge of cliffs, and cross vast bodies of water teaming (sic<\/em>) with ravenous creatures.\u201d Life\u2019s adventures for Dean are through the artistic process. But as he admits, cancer is of a different order. It is, as he puts it, \u2018thrust upon us\u2019. Indeed the notion of aleatoric chance as something outside of our own control, of our willing, is addressed by Dean in his Rolling Dice For a Prostate<\/em>. Even so, Dean aims to conquer the disease psychologically by his art \u2013 \u2018bringing it over to the positive side\u2019 as he puts it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Max Dean, Rolling Dice For a Prostate, 2020, pigment print on archival paper, 19 \u00bc x 28 \u00be in<\/p>\n\n\n\n His intoxication with life helps to explain the optimistic tenor of his show despite its theme. Dean recounts that his doctor told him that he is likely to die of something else before the cancer kills him. Nonetheless, the diagnosis augurs his end, albeit not imminently. In a soon-to-be-released film, Max Still<\/em>, produced by Katherine Knight, that documents the making of the pieces for this show, Dean reveals this optimism by his very struggle to express it. He observes that every film has a temporal ending: \u201cthe projector is going to get turned off, there\u2019s no more footage and the story is over.\u201d But he then adds that he doesn\u2019t want it<\/em> to end, that somehow he won\u2019t end it. There is no ending, he concludes. While this thought is literally self-contradictory it still expresses a genuine feeling.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Installation view of Max Dean: Still – Living Through Cancer and C<\/em>ovid with Caged, 2021, collaboration with Andrew Savery-Whiteway (in the center)<\/p>\n\n\n\n Hugh Alcock<\/p>\n\n\n\n Images are copyrighted Max Dean\/courtesy Stephen Bulger Gallery<\/p>\n\n\n\n<\/a><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n<\/a><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n<\/a><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n