My understanding of reality is fractal. Self-similar across every scale. A coastline that holds infinite complexity within a finite boundary, a fragment of the Mandelbrot set contains the whole. What this means for painting is that the individual and the universal are not opposites. They are the same pattern at different magnitudes. My most private experience of painting is, by this logic, simultaneously collective. I am not representing the fractal. I am an instance of it.
Perception is the subject. Observation and attention are my parameters. Consciousness is the mediator. The canvas is the physical result of metaphysical exchange. Where music spreads experience across time, painting collapses time into a point; a singularity. To make a painting is to collapse into a black hole. To encounter one is to stand before a white hole. This is the fractal condition: experience is irreducibly local and simultaneously universal.
CURRICULUM VITAE
Education
BACHELOR of fine arts
minor in electronic music
IRWIN SCHOLARSHIP RECIPIENT
KORET SCHOLARSHIP RECIPIENT
University of California Santa Cruz
2024
Group Exhibitions
2026
NImbash
Charles krug winery, st helena, ca.
2026
By hand
Blue line arts, roseville, ca.
2025
NImbash
Charles krug winery, st helena, ca.
2025
no theme, theme show
Covet gallery, oceanside, ca
2024
NImbash
Charles krug winery, st helena, ca.
2023
Blueprint.
sesnon gallery, Santa cruz, ca.
2023
salon de refuses.
four chicken gallery, san francisco, ca.
Solo Exhibitions
2023
Antithesis.
Eduardo Carrillo gallery, Santa cruz, ca
2022
HOME AWAY.
POP UP IN MY COLLEGE HOME, SANTA CRUZ, CA.
Maximilian von Strasser is an American artist living and working in Los Angeles. His practice spans painting, sculpture, furniture, and sound. His work folds nature, geometry, physics, and spirituality into a single symbiotic language.