Fredericks & Freiser is pleased to announce a solo exhibition of paintings by Maximilian Toth. Toth makes large-scale canvases of sketchy figures on chalkboard-black grounds. His figures consciously suggest a process, a fast rendering of a moment by which the raw physicality of a line describes both the potential to uncover a narrative as well as the active presence of a narrator.
Toth's subject is an updated suburban folk lore. Each scenario is based on a story from the artist‚s years growing up in a small New England town. He focuses on the type of tales that those who grew up in suburban America tell and retell either to establish shared experience or buoy individual origins. Yet these stories, which invariably invoke
degrees of violence (from innocent to absurd to deadly), address larger issues. Like all myths they serve to soothe the uncertainties of those who tell and those who listen. Toth's paintings aim to describe the narration from both points of view.
About the Artist
Max Toth (born 1978) received a BFA from Art Center, Pasadena and an MFA from Yale in 2006. Since then, he has been included in group shows at Wadsworth Athenaeum, Dallas Contemporary, Daniel Weinberg Gallery, Jack Tilton Gallery, and Fredericks & Freiser. This will be his first one-person exhibition. Toth was born in New Orleans, raised in Massachusetts and currently lives and works in New Haven.