Max Onink.

When you are looking at art, would you expect it to come home to bed with you? My work exists on the tilting point of the certain into the absurd. Your first impression feels like a familiar situation. Only to let you doubt it at a second glance. A camping kitchen set with a head slowly melting in the pot, or a dead duck that seemed to have flown into a sink, smashing it to pieces. I wish to disturb the natural flow of things, making you question the credibility of your believes. I use vulnerable subjects and uneasy feelings to adres that what might be too close for comfort or inappropriate. The intimacy may make you feel awkward. I wish my work would be in your life, that you let it into your house. You’re not imagining it; this work was made for you. I promise it’ll treat you well.

– How would you describe your artistic practice today? What are the primary themes and questions driving your current work? 

I make surrealist sculptures.

To me “value” is fluid, truths interchange and compete all the time. “Reality” is just a perspective that is equally insignificant as any other. The only thing I truly belief can give objective meaning to anything, is death.

My studio is full of realistic body parts and bodies in the process of becoming. The body is a central theme, but above all I am interested in absurdism: a yearning and revealing of the unknown. Alongside that come themes such as illusion, derangement, violence, anxiety, and transformation.

Realism is a big part of surrealism, only in a realistic situation you can emphasize the surreal.

– You once said, “I wish to disturb the natural flow of things, making people question the credibility of their beliefs.” When did this idea first emerge in your life? When did you begin exploring absurdity as a central theme in your work? 

I think I have always been attracted to pushing against boundaries. As a child I would draw things I was not supposed to draw, like scenes from hell, decapitated bodies, things that felt forbidden. As a teenager that fascination shifted into life itself. I became interested in crossing lines, doing anything illegal.

What stayed constant was the attraction to disturbance. Being disturbed and disturbing something felt almost the same to me. Both were forms of being impressed. They created intensity.

– You have mentioned that your work can be unsettling and may evoke feelings of discomfort. Do you see this as a form of provocation, or is it simply an intrinsic quality of your creative process? 

For me, the goal is not provocation. The goal is to translate the things that move me emotionally.

The only function of beauty in art is to lure you in.

Whether work is provocative is not up to me. That happens between the viewer and themselves. Some people find things perverse that I find beautiful. I once made a sculpture of a dead body lying beneath the Dutch flag with an erection. Many people focused on the perverse and problematic aspects of the image. For me, the work was also about vulnerability, sacrifice and tenderness. It was about an individual dying for something larger than themselves.

Sometimes people’s reactions reveal more about them than about the work.

That said, I do enjoy it when people become uncomfortable. Discomfort means growth. But not all my work leaves room for interpretation. Some work doesn’t leave space for your imagination. They operate on the physical.

– Can you tell us more about how a new work begins for you? How do you develop and shape your ideas? 

For me the process is continuous. Ideas are always accumulating and developing.

A large part of my practice comes from other artists. There are artists whose work I admire and I want my work to be part of their contribution to the art scene. I want to enter a dialogue with them. In these moments of inspiration I distinguish myself still, but I envision myself being part of their contribution as much as they are on me. Artists such as Gregor Schneider, Robert Gober, and Rosemarie Trockel are some of the artists that are part of that.

The artwork itself is always the most important thing. Sometimes it starts with an image, sometimes a material, sometimes an idea. The only hierarchy is the interest of the artwork itself and the development is probably fifty percent intuition and fifty percent deliberate construction. Making the work is often very deliberate, but I also learn new techniques during the process itself. The artwork teaches me how it wants to be made.

– You graduated from the Gerrit Rietveld Academie. Could you tell us about your experience there? How did it influence your development as an artist? 

I recently finished running a project space for ten months, which required a huge amount of social energy, organizing, collaborating, and producing exhibitions.

At the same time, I was rejected for funding. That put me in a position where I had to reinvent myself.

I am not happy about the rejection, but I am proud of it. I see my life and career as a narrative. Stories become more interesting when things do not work out. I am not rationalizing my disappointment; I am appropriating my circumstances.

Now I have the opportunity to spend more time in the studio, less time organizing, and more time developing the work itself. I want to experiment again. I want to enter dead ends, make mistakes, and discover new directions.

In a strange way, financial struggle can also create possibilities. Certain forms of improvised, vulnerable, and unstable work become available when expensive production methods are no longer an option. I am interested in what can emerge from that position.

– You are also one half of Studio MAX & ELLE, an artist-run initiative founded together with Elle van Baaren. What motivated you to take on the role of organiser? After all, maintaining a platform like this requires a great deal of time and energy that could otherwise be devoted to your own artistic practice. 

Organising has always been part of my practice.

If you do not organise, you spend a lot of time waiting for a curator or gallery to discover your work. Neither Elle nor I have much patience for that. We prefer to create our own opportunities.

We also genuinely love art. The reality is that many exhibitions contain only a few works that truly excite you. Running a project space allows you to create the exhibition you would want to visit yourself.

The most ambitious project we organized was DOUBLE DATE. Over ten months it kept growing, becoming more ambitious and more complex with each edition. At a certain point it felt like something larger than the organizers, the artists, or the space itself.

What began as an idea eventually became a collective effort involving many people who genuinely care about art. That is what made it special. It stopped belonging to any individual and became something bigger than all of us.

– What are your thoughts on the Amsterdam art scene today? How has being part of WOW Lieven influenced your artistic perspective and professional network? 

I am quite critical of the Amsterdam art scene.

I often feel that institutions and funding bodies reward professionalism and entrepreneurship more consistently than artistic risk. I would like to see more support for projects that genuinely challenge conventions rather than simply fitting within them.

I am speaking about “living art”, I mean work that creates dynamic dialogue rather than confirming existing ways of thinking. Work that does something. Work that takes risks. Work made by people who genuinely live for art.

The Dutch art world can feel small. There is a lot of gossip, a lot of nepotism, and often a limited range of possibilities.

Being part of WOW Lieven has been incredibly valuable. It creates opportunities for long-term relationships. I have collaborative meetings in my living room with friends, it is a personal way of working which I prefer.

– Financial sustainability remains a major challenge for many independent artists. How do you navigate this reality while staying true to your artistic and political values? 

Staying true to my artistic values is not the difficult part. The difficult part is production. When you spend most of your time working side jobs, you simply have less energy and fewer resources available for making work.

Being broke is exhausting. Every aspiring artist hears that artists are poor, and somehow you always imagine that you will be the exception. You imagine becoming famous and wealthy one day.

So far that has not happened.

Now I am surviving through a combination of stubbornness, optimism, and probably a bit of delusion. I am not burned out yet, although I could use a vacation.

– What five elements do you consider essential for building a sustainable long-term artistic practice, both creatively and practically? 

First, I need a place to work.

Second, energy. Whether that comes from ambition, obsession, or discipline does not matter.

Third, dialogue. Showing work creates reflection and allows you to see what you are actually making.

Fourth, materials. Having things around me to play around with, also the tools to make things. Old works, failed works, unfinished works. They often become the starting point for new ones or combining elements can lead to great results.

Fifth, seeing other art. Looking at the work of others constantly feeds my own practice.

– Where do you see yourself, both artistically and personally, over the next few years? Do you work according to a clear plan, or do you prefer to let intuition guide your path? 

At the moment I have a fairly clear plan. I do not feel that the Dutch art scene is particularly responsive to my work, so I want to focus more on showing internationally and building networks outside the Netherlands.

Countries such as Germany, the United Kingdom, and the United States have much larger art scenes. That creates more space for different kinds of practices.

That said, I do not think the problem lies entirely with the art world. My work also needs to become better. Whether I receive support or not, my responsibility remains the same: to keep improving.

– How do you recharge creatively and emotionally? 

Sleep.

– If you could be reincarnated as a plant or an animal, what would you choose—and why? 

I believe in eternal recurrence.

The idea is that you relive every detail of your life again and again for eternity. Every joy, every mistake, every disappointment, every success.

So, I would simply come back as myself.

Photos by Roman Ermolaev