Max van Olffen
maxvanolffen.cargo.site, max.van.olffen@gmail.com, instagram.com/maxvanolffen
"Fossilizied Dreams and Digs, Mixed Media on Panel, 140x110cm".
Enter the excavation. Uncover what has been covered up. Bones become monuments, thoughts are landscapes. Frozen excavations, relics of my silly existence posing as ancient artifacts to be uncovered and interpreted in a distant future. Frantically made marks, faded by time. My mythologized life inserted in a historical timeline, infused with historical weight. You see skins registering the material and immaterial detritus of my life. I play the roles of creator, excavator and time itself.
ART AS ARCHAEOLOGY
Thesis
A research into the relationship between art and archaeology. How can art function as archaeology and incorporate archaeological methods and theories in order to gain further understanding of the past, but also of archaeology and human existence itself? With this I hope to gain a deeper insight, beyond the superficial representational relationship to history and archaeological artifacts, and into the value of and processes behind the archaeological in art. The metaphorical process of digging and excavating to not just physically uncover, but to uncover what ideas and commonalities are conveyed through material culture. Both are characterized by an engagement with material culture and have a several formal similarities, but the value stretches beyond physical emulation and viewing art as archaeological allows ways of engaging with contemporary culture as well as human existence in a broader sense. Formally as well as theoretically my work is concerned with the how material culture communicates across time and how a life or a culture can be remembered, forgotten and constructed through archaeology. The value of the act of archaeology in itself, about itself and about oneself.