ESSAYS & SELECTED REVIEWS

A CONVERSATION
By Cuauhtémoc Medina

A Forest, Reprinted from Sala 10, Museo Universitario Arte Contemporáneo (MUAC), 2022

Every investment is also an ideology. In A Forest, Max de Esteban confronts us with the vision of the world of speculators…

[Read more…]

ESTÉTICA DE LA EXTINCIÓN
By Iván de la Nuez

Reprinted from Estética de la Extinción, Ed. Turner, 2022

Al contrario de lo previsto por el famoso dictum de Marx, hoy los hechos parecen suceder primero como farsa para repetirse, después, como tragedia…

[Read more…]

THE WORLD WITHOUT US
By Walter Benn Michaels

White Noise, Reprinted from Estética de la Extinción, Ed. Turner, 2022

Max de Esteban’s White Noise photographs tell a story and express a desire. The story is apocalyptic not exactly the end of the world…

[Read more…]

THE BIOCYBERNETIC FOREST
By W.J.T. Mitchell

A Forest, Reprinted from Sala 10, Museo Universitario Arte Contemporáneo (MUAC) 2022

The artist Max de Esteban “asks” a machine to take a self-portrait. Not just any machine, but a computer…

[Read more…]

MEME-SWARM AND MICROTRADING
By Franco “BIFO” Berardi

Reprinted from ILLWILLEDITIONS, 2021

As Year 2 of the Age of the Pandemic begins, the final battle between humankind and unfettered capitalism is turning ugly…

[Read more…]

LAS CENIZAS DE NUESTRA ERA
By Andrea Soto Calderón

White Noise, Reprinted from Estética de la Extinción, 2021

En White Noise, Max de Esteban realiza una investigación crítica de las implicaciones y consecuencias que comporta la posibilidad de la extinción humana…

[Read more…]

A VISUAL INTERPRETATION OF THE CONTEMPORARY CHAOS
By Franco “BIFO” Berardi

Twenty Red Lights, Reprinted from CGAC – Centro Galego de Arte Contemporánea, 2019

The installation of Max is an attempt to visualise the financial dynamics…

[Read more…]

TWENTY RED LIGHTS
By Diana Padrón & Lorenza Pignatti

Reprinted from La Virreina Centre de la Imatge, 2018

Digital technologies are leading us to a profound and accelerated transformation of our world. The Rolling Stones reflected this precipitate shift…

[Read more…]

I DON’T UNDERSTAND
By Bill Kouwenhoven

Binary Code, 2018

“¡Yo tampoco entiendo nada del mundo!” Max de Esteban. When Max and I last talked about the feeling of being overwhelmed….

[Read more…]

A CONVERSATION

Franco ‘Bifo’ Berardi, Michel Feher and Max de Esteban

Curator and moderator: Valentín Roma

Video – Virreina Centre de la Imatge, 2017

[Link to video…]

SYNTHETIC COLOURS
By Franco “BIFO” Berardi

Reprinted from Twenty Red Lights, La Virreina Centre de la Imatge 2017

The world may be viewed as the sphere of intersection of countless psycho-dynamic trajectories of imagination and projection…

[Read more…]

BRAVE NEW WORLD REDUX
By Michel Feher

Reprinted from Twenty Red Lights, La Virreina Centre de la Imatge 2017

On first analysis, our brave new capitalist world can be traced to Milton Friedman’s pronouncement quoted below and drawn...

[Read more…]

INTERVIEW
By Crisia Miroiu

Reprinted from Fotoviny Magazine
August 2017

I think one of the beauties of photography is that it is “outside-in” and humbler in its ambitions…

[Read more…]

SILO DREAMS
By Paul Wombell

Binary Code, 2017

Silos teeming with corn, wheat or soybeans become death traps when grain cascades out of control, asphyxiating or crushing their victims…

[Read more…]

INTERVIEW
By Hamidah Glasgow

Reprinted from The Center for Fine Art Photography, July 2017

Well…it all started in 2011 when I arrived at the conviction that traditional photography inadequately represented contemporaneity…

[Read more…]

INTERVIEW
By Zone Zero

Reprinted from Zone Zero, August 2016

Appropriation and remix have a long artistic tradition, beginning with Picasso’s collages. As early as the 1920s…

[Read more…]

MULTILAYERED WORKS
By Pavel Banka

Reprinted from Fotofest Biennal, 2016

The work of Max de Esteban made a strong impression on me the very first time I came across it. Formally, his photographs evoked the work of Robert Heinecken…

[Read more…]

ABOUT THE COVER
By Lyle Rexer

Reprinted from Photograph Magazine, 2015

Like a fault line in the surface of appearances, photo collage opens up in periods of social stress and political obfuscation…

[Read more…]

THE SINGULAR OBJECTIVE
By Valentin Roma

Reprinted from Propositions, La Fabrica, 2015

When we look at a photograph two doubts suddenly arise: Where are we looking at it from? What discourses might enable us to read it?…

[Read more…]

INTERVIEW
By Archivo Magazine

Reprinted from Archivo Magazine, September 2015

Since I was a child I am passionately interested in art. I think I was thirteen when I first saw photos…

[Read more…]

IN CHIAROSCURO
By Rafael Argullol

Reprinted from Propositions, La Fabrica, 2015

If I had to summarize Max de Esteban’s latest work in a single phrase, I would write: “unsettling interlude.” This is the predominant sensation…

[Read more…]

HEADS WILL ROLL Review
By William Meyers

Reprinted from The Wall Street Journal, 2015

Max de Esteban, born in Barcelona in 1959 and educated at Stanford University, is a peculiarly protean artist: His first major body of work…

[Read more…]

HEADS WILL ROLL Review
By Loring Knoblauch

Reprinted from Collector Daily, 2015

As its title implies, Max de Esteban’s new series Heads Will Roll isn’t wildly optimistic about the future of humanity. His densely layered and atmospheric…

[Read more…]

THE ENTRAILS OF THE SOUL
By Félix de Azúa

Reprinted from Propositions, La Fabrica, 2015

Is it possible to see the soul of a dead machine? I believe so; or at least I hold that we can try to get a glimpse at what in principle is invisible…

[Read more…]

THE QUESTION CONCERNING WHAT IS FLUID AND UNSTABLE
By Laura González Flores

Reprinted from Propositions, La Fabrica, 2015

There are two types of images that allow us to understand photography. For one, there are those whose…

[Read more…]

PHOTOCAPITALISM IS AMONG US
By Carles Guerra

Reprinted from Heads will Roll, Hatje Cantz, 2014

The current debate on photography is about to eliminate the remains of a practice that, since the nineteenth century…

[Read more…]

INTERESTING TIMES, INDEED!
By Bill Kouwenhoven

Reprinted from Heads will Roll, Hatje Cantz, 2014

It is taken as gospel truth that there is an ancient Chinese curse, perhaps dating to the era of Warring States of about 475 BC to 221 BC…

[Read more…]