Max Kornfield

This exhibition contains a selection of Max Kornfield’s large paintings that emerged from the artist’s strict ritual regiment and their correlated visionary experiences. Kornfield notoriously maintained sobriety and ascetic discipline of isolation and silence while conducting their artistic and magical work, sustaining gruelingly long hours in the studio across weeks and months, then shifting to the opposite extreme as required for select rituals. The resulting artworks are presented at Occulture 25 and they are portals, metaphysically open and physically large enough for viewers to step into them. The audience is invited to engage with the paintings on their own terms and encouraged to share their impressions, thoughts, and insights with the artist and each other.

Max Kornfield, born in Los Angeles, CA, graduated from the School of Visual Arts, New York, NY. Their interdisciplinary research is presented across Western Europe and the United States through oil paintings and exhibition curation. Kornfield’s paintings are rooted in the combination of artistic practice, community engagement, philosophical and theological inquiry across Jewish, Christian and Pagan esoteric, magical, and mystical traditions. These paintings embody ritual, prayer, meditation, and catharsis in chalk, gold, and oil. The resulting artworks represent visionary experiences entwining the symbolic and material to push unity and tension beyond the widest breadth and depth currently imaginable.

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