Max Petts | Dead Proscenium ii (it’s so easy)

£4,200.00

Dead Proscenium ii (it’s so easy)

Acrylic, emulsion, mdf, stainless steel, pine, nylon, masking tape, panel pins, giclée print, graphite, watercolour, coloured pencil, tempera craft paint, coffee, paper

80.4 x 110.9 x 1.8 cm

2025

£4,200 GBP

Enquire here

A looping play on theatrical framing and consumer ease, this work borrows its stage structure from a YouTube tutorial - complete with share icon in the top right corner. At the centre, a colouring book landscape with stylised clouds and the Apple brightness logo sun evokes fields of production, farming, and human order. The phrase it’s so easy, taken from a 1990s Argos advert, sits beneath a row of test-card colour bars - symbols of printing precision and commercial clarity. Above, a ladder drawn from a 2012 sculpture sketch rises ambiguously, embodying both aspiration and descent. A small childlike star, K’nex box textures, and a paper concertina nod to the formative materials that shape perception. Petts quietly contrasts the complexity of making with the seductive frictionlessness of shopping, pointing to the privilege of mistaking art for retail - and how the space of meaning, like a stage, is always under construction.

Dead Proscenium ii (it’s so easy)

Acrylic, emulsion, mdf, stainless steel, pine, nylon, masking tape, panel pins, giclée print, graphite, watercolour, coloured pencil, tempera craft paint, coffee, paper

80.4 x 110.9 x 1.8 cm

2025

£4,200 GBP

Enquire here

A looping play on theatrical framing and consumer ease, this work borrows its stage structure from a YouTube tutorial - complete with share icon in the top right corner. At the centre, a colouring book landscape with stylised clouds and the Apple brightness logo sun evokes fields of production, farming, and human order. The phrase it’s so easy, taken from a 1990s Argos advert, sits beneath a row of test-card colour bars - symbols of printing precision and commercial clarity. Above, a ladder drawn from a 2012 sculpture sketch rises ambiguously, embodying both aspiration and descent. A small childlike star, K’nex box textures, and a paper concertina nod to the formative materials that shape perception. Petts quietly contrasts the complexity of making with the seductive frictionlessness of shopping, pointing to the privilege of mistaking art for retail - and how the space of meaning, like a stage, is always under construction.

Max Petts lives and works in London. They graduated from the Goldsmiths MFA in 2023 and from Chelsea College of Art in 2012.
Their practice deals with the complexity of looking and making while seeking to examine their place in the world and the specific set of privileges and penalties they have inherited. Working across disciplines (drawing, painting, writing, finding) they focus on the interplay of images and objects and the relationships that allow meaning to develop. Relationships between bodies and materials, facts and fictions. They consider their practice as an awareness building exercise; a way to posit contradictions.
2019 - 2023 Goldsmiths, University of London, MFA Fine Art
2009 - 2012 Chelsea College of Art, BA (Hons) Fine Art
Selected shows:
2025 Proscenium, Xxijra Hii, London, UK (Solo)
2022 flowers (w/ Robert Orr) - Xxijra Hii, London, UK (Duo)
2025 Salon Sauvage, Gnossienne Gallery, London, UK (Forthcoming group show)
2023 This be the verse, Xxijra Hii, London, UK (Group), Interlude, Kupfer, London, UK (Group), Baggage Claim, Staffordshire St, London, UK, 2022 Present Tense, Goldsmiths MFA Studios, London, UK, 2021 MAXWORLD presents: Smokey, Merle and friends..., 310 New Cross Road, London, UK, 2020 Goldsmiths, Department of Eagles, Online, 2019 You, Me and Everybody Else, Oneroom Gallery, London, UK, 2016 My Own Private Idaho, Charlton Gallery, London, UK.

Max Petts | Dead Proscenium ii (it’s so easy)

£4,200 GBP

Enquire here

£4,200 GBP

Enquire here

About Max Petts

Max Petts CV