By Max Avi Kaplan (Gallatin Adjunct Instructor, Gallatin BA ’09)
Bronze Tinted Mirror, 2016
Birchwood, reflective acrylic, UV print 32” x 20” Courtesy to Yve YANG GALLERY
The first iteration of Max Avi Kaplan’s series Big Night For You? was conceived, produced, and exhibited at the Hochschule für bildende Künste, Hamburg. This work is composed of image object hybrids that invite an interactive exploration where viewer becomes voyeur and objects entrap images. Bronze Tinted Mirror engages the viewer in a meditation referencing the thinly layered illusions created by the veneer of a fractured glamorous image.
MAX AVI KAPLAN works with photography, sculpture and installation. He received a BA in Art History & Visual Culture, an MA in Costume Studies from New York University and an MFA from School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Kaplan’s work explores the psychological fragmentation of glamour as an illusion imbedded on the surface of designed objects that recede in space. He received an Art School Alliance Fellowship from the Hochschule für bildende Künst, Hamburg and more recently SMFA’s Boit Award. His work is exhibited internationally, most recently at the Yuan Art Museum in Beijing.