Max Vree

Max is perpetually translating between image, language, symbol, and emotion. Using aesthetics and abjection as tools to force the eye, he crafts cryptic visual narratives in which creatureful characters are forced to fathom the unfathomable, investigating topics such as deviation, dehumanization, and desire. He is deeply inspired by horror fiction in the vein of B.R. Yeager, Mary Shelley, and Alison Rumfitt.

Currently, Max is focused on developing the poetic texture of the unreal and using this to craft an escapist shelter for those who feel alienated. His grad work takes the form of an experimental visual novel extended into drawings, sculpture, and installation. The unreal—a subterranean alter-architectural clusterfuck of club- and internet culture—becomes a stage for schizosexumotional states of (dis)connection and (dis)embodiment as an anonymized creature yearns to find belonging in this labyrinthine in-between. Narrated through a symbolic language forged from keys, question-marks, and fleshy distortions, the story investigates queer loneliness and how to live well as a subject of (self-)alienation.