Sowing the Soil with Salt

Download list of works on canvas

Download list of works on paper

Sid Motion Gallery is delighted to announce its second solo exhibition with Max Wade, ‘Sowing the Soil with Salt’.

Wade’s new large scale canvases have all been made over the last 8 months. The works are autobiographical, based from sketchbook drawings of his travels and day to day life.

The drawings start as mundane observations – often focussing on ‘spaces in between’ rather than on an object itself. While the original marks are garnered directly from drawings of his everyday environment, through his painting process Wade reduces these sketches to their critical forms and their negative space. He scales them up; simplifies the motifs; rotates and distorts them allowing the works to depict a layered, imagined landscape where plains interchange, and motifs obscure themselves to become ambiguous.

These new works are the largest made by Wade to date. Wade explores the performative quality this scale adopts with the viewer. “I push paint, I scratch paint, I swipe. I want the paintings to have a sense of rhythm, physicality and energy. I want the paintings to feel alive.”

Artist Biography

Max Wade (b. 1985, London) studied Fine Art Painting at Brighton University, following a Foundation at City of Bath College. Wade’s most recent solo and group exhibitions include; Platform: London, presented by Sid Motion Gallery for David Zwirner online (2020, solo); Wind for the Sails, Messums Wiltshire, Salisbury (2020, solo); Between the Dog and the Wolf, Sid Motion Gallery, London (2019, solo); For Tina, Cob Gallery, London (2019, solo); Royal Academy Summer Show, Royal Academy, London (2016); Tabula Rasa, The Annexe, London (2015, solo). Max Wade has undertaken residencies in Sofia, Bulgaria and at Artist’s Workshop & Exchange, Muscat, Oman.