Max Zorn: Using the Familiar in Astonishing Ways

“I wanted to use street lamps as an urban gallery and I wanted to use the darkness as the setting around my artwork.”

That quote (and image) come from one Max Zorn. Max is an artist; a street artist from Amsterdam, in fact. And his medium is brown packing tape.

The material I use is brown packing tape, which I stick on layers of thin acrylic glass sheets. The more layers of tape I add, the darker the shades on the artwork become. The different shades of brown allow me to shape out my scenes and portraits. I use an ordinary scalpel or X-Acto knife to cut and shape the layers of tape. The last thing I need is a lit window.

Zorhn claims that his settings and themes are “influenced by film noir,” that he finds inspiration from the novels of such writers as Hemingway, Steinbeck, and Salinger, and that his work reflects “American realism artists such as Edward Hopper.” That last point is particularly evident in this obvious “Nighthawks” homage.

Max’s official YouTube channel features a number of these time-lapse videos of a creation from inception to completion. The Audrey Hepburn’s great fun, though that might be mostly/entirely the fault of Madeleine Peyroux and her “Dance Me to the End of Love.” The New York Eve video and image from the top of the post are definitely my favorite instances of Zorn’s creative process and the sort of works he creates, though. Wonderful. (Visit his gallery and Instagram account for more images, including some in/on their natural habitat, the Amsterdamian Street Lamp.)

Oh, and here’s one especially for fellow Patheosi and friend Frank Weathers, who can never get enough McQueen.

Attribution(s): Images are the property of the artist Max Zorn, whose FAQ page says that “you can use all images and pictures which are displayed on my websites (www.maxzorn.com and www.sticktogether.maxzorn.com) free of charge for non-commercial purposes. ‘Non-commercial’ basically means that you are not using my name or my artworks to make money, sell a product on my behalf, or promote your own business (like prints, merchandises, newspapers, television shows, advertisements, campaigns, etc.).”