Hyperpsychescapes
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| Crowded Skies |
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| 3-Bedroom Duplex |
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| Air Mattress |
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| Church |
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| Balloons 2 |
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| Fever Ball |
By Tom Wachunas
“…Flat
Affect is not about a call to action, but a sort of resignation – the
numbed state of waiting for security, for permanence, for a future that feels
less borrowed…” – Maxmillian
Peralta
Wordlessly
watching /He waits by the window/ And wonders /At the empty place inside… (lyrics from “Helplessly Hoping” by
Steven Stills)
EXHIBIT: FLAT
AFFECT – paintings by
Maxmillian Peralta / at Massillon Museum Studio M / 121 Lincoln Way East in
downtown Massillon, Ohio / ON VIEW THROUGH AUGUST 3, 2025 /330.833.4061
/ viewing hours: Tuesday through Saturday 9:30am - 5:00pm and Sunday 2:00pm -
5:00pm
https://www.massillonmuseum.org/
https://www.massillonmuseum.org/home/exhibits/detailpage/maxmillian-peralta-flat-affect
Executed with admirable precision - what
some might call a hyper-realism technique - the recent paintings here (acrylic
and acrylic ink on canvas) by Maxmillian Peralta are pensive and mercurial
juxtapositions of indoor and outdoor spaces, structures, and objects.
The
artist’s statement posted with these works is a remarkably eloquent exercise of
forthright candor. A brave honesty. Peralta is unapologetic in telling us that
the paintings “… reflect the quiet generational dread of contemporary
existence…These empty interiors, moody and subdued, hold a stillness charged
with hopeless unease…They are impossible, looming visions and omens that
confront the viewer with my personal anxieties around trauma and fear…They
evoke a world which feels increasingly cold and impossible to navigate or
survive: a place where fear is ambient, collective, and unavoidable…”
Accordingly, the surreal scenes and sites Peralta
constructs are haunting conflations of the familiar and the enigmatic to make
startling (albeit beautifully painted) symbols of an ineluctably bleak
existential emptiness. “The result,” he confesses, “is a meditation
on displacement and dread – interior and exterior, private and political –
quietly seeping into one another.”
Like a strange procession of little puffy
white clouds, quietly seeping into the azure firmament of “Crowded Skies,” there’s
an X-ray image of the artist’s teeth floating above a huge utility pole holding
up a wild tangle of black wires. Wires presumably connected to some desirable
place? Are those teeth smiling, or grimacing? Could this be the gaping mouth of
our entire world hungry for empathy, meaning, and purpose? Or a plea for the
power to plug into mercy and hope? If so, then please sir, can I have some
more?
Ahh, the dreadful weight of waiting. Reality
bites.
