Max Colby Explained

Max Colby (born 1990) is an artist known for her work in textiles, sculpture, installation, embroidery, and painting. Her work highlights precarity and vulnerability through a consistent investigation of ritual objects, most often, funereal. Touching on such ceremonial iconography, the artist constructs objects which subvert the aesthetics of patriarchal systems. ^[1] To her, Colby's process is about undoing the conditioning of "inherited cultural understandings of binary gender, as well as class and taste."^[2] Colby's elaborate work in installation utilizing beads, faux flowers, sequins, ribbons, fabric and jewelry is a flamboyant celebration of self-expression through the artist's meticulous process of utopian construction of a universe.^[3]

Early life

Colby was born in West Palm Beach, Florida. She studied at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston and received a BFA in 2012.

Exhibitions

2011

• Arches Show, Danforth Museum of Art, Framingham, MA
• Concepts of the Self, MFA Horticulture Library, Boston, MA
• Exchange, Prints from Frans Masereel, SMFA, Boston, MA;  
• Cranbrook Academy of Art, Bloomfield Hills, MI;  
• Edinburgh College of Art, Edinburgh, Scotland;  
• Antwerp Academy of Arts, Antwerp, Belgium

2012

• New Prints/2012 Summer selected by Shahzia Sikander, IPCNY, New York, NY
• H x W x D x T, Yes.Oui.Si Gallery, Boston, MA
• Slivers, B.A.G. Gallery, SMFA, Boston, MA
• The Artist’s Voice, Resnikoff Gallery, Boston, MA
• Celebrating the Transformative Power of Art, Doric Hall, Massachusetts Statehouse, Boston, MA
• Transatlantic Fun-O-Pack, Edinburgh College of Art, Edinburgh, Scotland;  
• SMFA, Boston, MA

2013

• Crafted, TEMP Gallery, New York, NY
• Prints on Prince, Crossman Gallery, Whitewater, WI

2014

Vernissage: 100, Greenpoint Gallery, Brooklyn, NY

2017

Stitch: Beyond Function, Henry Zarrow Center for Art and Education, Tulsa, OK

2019

• Harvest: A Convening of Materiality and Form curated by Sidel & McElwreath, ChaShaMa, New York, NY
• No Trigger Warning curated by Bill Arning, Flatland Gallery, Houston, TX
• Figuring the Floral, Wave Hill, Bronx, NY
• A Body of Work curated by Shehab Awad, Jane Lombard Gallery, New York, NY
• Rijswijk Textile Biennial, Museum Rijswijk, Rijswijk, Netherlands
• Lobster Dinner curated by Will Hutnick, Trestle Gallery, Brooklyn, NY
• Soft Grit, LoBo Gallery, Brooklyn, NY

2020

• Tableau Vivant curated by Anna Cone and Victoria Udondian, SPRING/BREAK Art Show, New York, NY

2021

• Home, Sugar Hill Children’s Museum of Art and Storytelling, New York, NY
• Uncommon Ground, Shoshana Wayne Gallery, Los Angeles, CA
• Fringe, Denny Dimin Gallery, New York, NY
• Above & Below, Shoshana Wayne Gallery, Los Angeles, CA
• Cuir curated by Chiachio & Giannone, Isabel Croxatto Galería, Santiago, Chile
• Dissolution, Leslie-Lohman Museum of Art, New York, NY

2022

• Art in Focus, Rockefeller Center, presented in partnership with Art Production Fund, New York, NY
• Radical Enchantments, Aicon, New York, NY

Notes and References

1. Web site: About . 2022-03-16 . Max Colby . en-US.
2. Web site: Multimedia Visual Artist Max Colby Comes to Rockefeller Center . 2022-03-01 . www.rockefellercenter.com . en.
3. Web site: Yerebakan . Osman Can . Highlights from 'With Pleasure: Pattern and Decoration in American Art 1972-1985' . Interior Design . 11 June 2022.