Blurb, 2009 – Glenn Barkley
Max Lieberman
12 March - 4 April, 2009
Flinders St Gallery, Sydney
In a world full of things the obvious reaction is to horde and covet and the paintings of Max Lieberman have a collector’s drive. They are a posting on the questions that have long obsessed the creative imagination and they fit within long established traditions.
In this world, obsessed with image and object, where the hierarchies of meaning and order have collapsed, is it any wonder that an artist would still remain captivated with the capturing of the inanimate? And when you add the internet, a dump of imagery revolutionising and invigorating the subject of painting, is it surprising that painting retains its potency? That it provides the poetic means to harvest these images?
Lieberman takes on the melange of the contemporary condition. The outpouring of work is tumultuous and diverse. It brings the real, the false and the imagined together in a mishmash of meaning and wonder.
Glenn Barkley
Curator, MCA
(Museum of Contemporary Art, Australia)