PACKING TAPE
In this age of online shopping, architects are designing apartment blocks with space for postal deliveries. Yes, parcels are everywhere. And so, inevitably, is packing tape. Maybe Dutch artist Max Zorn anticipated this huge cultural change when he fixed his first translucent tape artwork to a lamp post in Amsterdam in 2011. Max had been developing his audacious method for a while – using nothing but brown packing tape and a scalpel to create vivid urban nightscapes. When he attached his work to streetlamps, the bulbs acted as lightboxes and lit up his images for all to see.
Layers of Packing Tape
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Sparkle
50 x 35cm, Packing Tape on Acrylic Glass
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Glass Flower
80 x 60cm, Packing Tape on Acrylic Glass
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Blue Bird
50 x 35cm, Packing Tape on Acrylic Glass
Max Zorn says: "I was always a big fan of using the city as the backdrop for art. But I felt one aspect was underrepresented: street art that appears at night, when a city changes its face. So, I came up with the idea to use thousands of city lights as an urban gallery. My first artwork was stolen a long time ago, and I’ve forgotten the bruises I got while climbing that lamp post. But it was the first tape, and a lot followed."
What exactly followed was that Max's street art went viral. Soon after, the artist started selling his work. Max recreated scenes from movies and made portraits of icons of popular culture. More recently he expanded his range still further, introducing more colour and taking on large and ambitious crowd scenes. Max's work has been on display constantly since 2011 across hundreds of shows. Recent exhibition venues include the Museum of Urban and Contemporary Art in Munich and the Scope Miami Beach Art Fair during Art Basel Miami Week.
Walk - 120 x 87 cm
Star-Studded Nights - 120 x 80 cm
Max Zorn
B.
Amsterdam, Netherlands
Works in
Amsterdam, Netherlands
