Soccer Jerseys as Color-Field Painting
Paintings League tries to answer the age-old question: “How do you make art for people who usually don’t like art?” After much investigation, the artist Max Siedentopf concluded that people who avoid museums and galleries are often the same people who would rather spend their time watching football. If it is safe to say that there are more football fans than there are art fans, why not cater to this newfound audience? Here, Siedentopf tried to find the solution by creating a series of paintings that would please both the most critical art enthusiast and the most serious football fanatic. Paintings League pays homage to iconic football teams like FC Bayern München, Inter Milan, Chelsea FC, Manchester United, and FC Barcelona by turning the teams’ iconic shirts into acrylic-on-canvas paintings. Art enthusiasts will appreciate the minimalist, abstract approach and brushstrokes of the paintings, while football fans can enjoy looking at their favorite team colors. Just like in football, the paintings act like a league. Each painting represents a diverse group of people through their interests, passions, and backgrounds and ultimately tries to be the champion of the Paintings League.
Max Siedentopf (1991) is a Berlin based multi-disciplinary conceptual artist working across video, photography, sculpture, creative direction and everything in-between and is the founder of the of the art publication ORDINARY. From 2013 - 2020 Max Siedentopf has been creative director of the 'legendary and unorthodox" creative agency KesselsKramer, which was founded in 1996 by the dutch artist Erik Kessels, and is the only one that has worked at all three offices and becoming the youngest partner at age 25. In 2019 Galerie Kernweine exhibited Max Siedentopf's series ”Stock Im Arsch”.
Flexibound
16.00 x 23.00 cm
96 Pages
Softcover
Max has been described by Vogue Italy as viral artist and his installation “Toto Forever” was included in artnet’s “10 Extraordinary Artworks You Need to Travel to the Edge of the World to See” next to Elmgreen & Dragset’s ‘Prada Marfa’, Yayoi Kusama’s ‘Yellow Pumpkin’ and Le Corbusier’s ‘Notre Dame du Haut’.
In June 2019, Siedentopf starred in the music video for “Mine Right Now”, a song by Norwegian singer Sigrid Max was supposed to direct. This was due to Sigrid’s flight being cancelled, the singer therefore being unable to appear in the video herself and Max ended up starring in instead.
Next to this he is the founder of Ordinary Magazine which was nominated for Magazine Of The Year, Best Art Direction and Best use of Photography by the Stack Awards. For his Gommi “Psychosis” music video he was awarded the “Most Bizarre Video” at the Berlin Music Video Awards and was also nominated Best New Director at the UKMVAs.