Author Description

A companion to Max Cole: Works 1970-2018 (Radius Books, 2017), this volume features a selection of new paintings and works on paper that recently appeared in the show Endless Journey (SITE Santa Fe, Oct 2022 - January 2023). Cole's iconic paintings invite viewers on a meditative journey through her lifelong investigation of rhythmic repetitive line and composition. "Written like music or poetry, Cole's lines are records of movement, keepers of time. The slight variation in each hand-made mark creates a visual echo that vibrates across the canvas creating a visceral and immersive experience for the viewer," notes SITE curator, Brandee Caoba. Cole's career commenced in 1976 with a four-person exhibition entitled New Abstract Painting at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Between 1979 and 1984, her work was featured in four exhibitions at the Sidney Janis Gallery in New York City. She was a part of two exhibitions at Albright Knox, one in 1979 and the next in 2007. In 2004, she held a solo exhibition at the Kolumba Museum in Cologne, Germany. Her work was permanently installed in Italy's Panza Collection in 2000, and it was included in The Splendor of Truth, the Beauty of Charity in the Vatican in 2011. She had a solo exhibition in 2012 at the Mies van der Rohe Haus in Berlin entitled To the Line. In 2013, her solo exhibition, Meditations, was held at St. Peter's Cathedral in Cologne. Her work was also featured in Guiseppe Panza di Biumo: American Dialogs, Ca' Pesare in 2015, for which the International Gallery of Contemporary Art in Venice collaborated with The Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles, The Guggenheim in New York, and the Panza Collection in Italy. She has exhibited work in numerous other museums in Europe and the United States, and her work continues in an endless journey.