Max Adrian is a visual artist whose soft-sculptural work playfully considers queer ideas of sexuality and identity through Craft. Greatly influenced by LGBTQ+ history, drag, puppetry, street theater, and other forms of radical performance, Adrian sews highly tactile sculptures that reference his performative influences with connotations of costume, nightlife, and sexual scenarios. His sculptures are intricately sewn using materials like faux fur, faux leather, and spandex. The push and pull between the trepidation and the desire to touch is a key element to Adrian’s work, especially being made from materials that beg for interaction. Adrian simultaneously conjures images of children’s playhouses and red-lit dungeons with his work as a method of posing questions about how we learn to communicate and share ourselves with others. The resulting objects are social lubricators, activating imagined relationships we might have with them or with each other.
Adrian is a current graduate student at Temple University’s Tyler School of Art and Architecture in Philadelphia, where he is pursuing an MFA in Fibers and Material Studies. He holds a BFA in Fiber and Creative Writing from the Kansas City Art Institute. He was awarded a 2015 Windgate Fellowship from the Center for Craft, Creativity, and Design for his proposal of an intensive study of theatre design and puppetry among such places as Chicago, Prague, and India. Adrian’s practice has received support from the Foundation for Contemporary Arts (New York, New York) and the Greater Columbus Arts Council (Columbus, Ohio) as well as a variety of residency programs including the Charlotte Street Studio Residency (Kansas City, Missouri), Second Sight Project (Columbus, Ohio), Vermont Studio Center (Johnson, Vermont), Arrowmont School of Arts and Crafts (Gatlinburg, Tennessee), Lighthouse Works (Fishers Island, New York), and Millay Colony for the Arts (Austerlitz, New York).
To see the interview with Max Adrian about this exhibition, click here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UMDQ12IwcFc&t=7s
