Exit Through The Glory Hole: A Two Shelves Interview With Max Kraushaar
Max Kraushaar is a Northwestern artist pursuing answers to his own questions through unique experiences that hopefully will benefit others. He was born and raised in Seattle and currently lives in Twisp, WA.
Kim Selling lives in Seattle with her many complexes. She likes Chile Lime Cholula, all dogs, and unnatural dye-jobs. Writing stresses her out.
KS: Please pronounce your last name for our readers:
MK: It’s Krao-sahr. Krao-sahr. As my mother likes to say, there’s no SH in Kraushaar.
KS: Because y’all are fuckin loud?
MK: We are a real loud family, and you should meet my father.
KS: How much of your ego comes from being able to build things?
MK: A lot, but not all. And I’m trying … I try on a daily basis to mitigate that because I don’t think that building things is something that you can do for your whole life. Its phase-specific, so I recognize that it’s definitely this part of my life that I’m in – and it is something I’ll do for my whole life in some scale or another, but I’m not the world’s best contractor. I’m not building homes anymore, so I can’t, like, claim that I’m…
KS: … constructing a landscape?
MK: Constructing a landscape – I’m not a full-time construction worker anymore, so that’s not the identity I can have.
KS: So you also can no longer have that blue-collar sex appeal.
MK: Right? It’s all gone. I just washed that all away. Construction work, professionally, is inherently an ego game, and every bit of the construction process becomes a dick-measuring contest. But then you get into it, and you watch these guys talk about failures and successes, and it all just relates to doing it better or whatever; but really, there’s only one way to do it, which is the right way. You can look at something and go, oh, that’s right. And if that’s it, then it’s it. It’s a very fluid term. So, it’s a pointless thing to have your ego bound up in. But I do believe in having a healthy ego.
From the “Ladder Takedown” series.
KS: How does consent play into your work? How is consent relayed as a concept versus the reality of its use?
MK: So, I’ve always made work that was moderately participatory. One of the first things that I made after graduating college was a set of two massage chairs that faced each other; they were angled so you could lay in them and your faces could look at each other and they had tubes you could stick your arms through so as to touch each other’s hands. With stuff like that, you have to choose to sit in the thing, so consent is built into the object. But as I started getting more experiential, and as Graham [Downing] and I started making more work that was more experiential, consent becomes a difficult thing because…
KS: … sometimes it’s more than just a choice?
MK: Sometimes it’s more than just a choice. Consent is absolutely 100% percent necessary in everything I do moving forward. In the past it wasn’t so much a conversation topic in my work. And so, Graham and I were doing stuff like installing work in Seattle public parks, where there’s …
KS: … which isn’t consensual.
MK: … which isn’t consensual, first of all. There is something to be said for stumbling upon something that isn’t requiring you to interact with it.
Max Kraushaar’s public performance and installation at NEPO 5k, 2014.
KS: Right, but physical installation is inherently non-consensual.
MK: Exactly. So, consent is ultra important. And I think when you create a situation that requires consent, which is a more nuanced interaction – if you just have something that somebody can stumble upon, that’s not nuanced. You’re just walking upon it, and it’s there, and you have a chance encounter, and that’s beautiful. But when you have something that’s a chance encounter, and then somebody gets to look at it, judge it, and then give it some amount of trust – then you’re benefitting from a give-and-go. Like with this piece, there’s a big hole, and what I’m asking people to do is trust. Any time you’re talking about a glory hole, that’s a trust situation.
KS: Or just any unknown landscape.
MK: Any time you’re inserting your body part – any body part – into a hole of any kind where you can’t see the other side, that’s a trust issue. Ideally, when you challenge people to give you trust, then you have more options for reward because they made a choice, and can also be rewarded, and feel like they had a say in what happened. And that’s all consent is, it’s trust-giving. I trust you enough to give you control over my body part.
KS: How do you include consent in your work without giving away the theme of your intentions too early?
MK: I think that mystery, surprises, and treats are ultra important, and the whole point is to give somebody a fresh experience. And the more time that somebody has with the full scope of the experience, the less special the experience is. So if you can get somebody to give you consent and almost immediately start rewarding them for it, then they can start exploring that reward. But if you tell somebody two weeks in advance that you’re going to ask for their consent so that they can experience this thing, they’ll have too much time to mull it over – so that, by the time you get to the activity, you’ve already walked all the ground, and there’s no surprise, and it’s all played out.
KS: They’ve already made a decision about the experience.
MK: Right. I’ve spent so much time thinking about what’s going into this work, that if anyone were to spend the same amount of time thinking about these experiences as I have, it wouldn’t be fresh or interesting for them anymore.
Max and Graham’s New Beach, an artificial beach-in-a-box experience at Hedreen Gallery (Seattle) in 2015.
KS: Where is the power in creating a sensory exhibit without visually existing in your own show?
MK: I’ve been debating this a lot in the process of doing this. I’ve been living off of tile working right now, and in the last six months, the majority of my lifeblood has come from laying tile. In the process of designing this exhibit, there are questions of … because I’m a talented tile layer, should I be pushing boundaries or should I experiment? Tile laying is a system of rules. This is my grid, this is my layout, this is where things end and begin – and you simply execute the rules. I like tile work because there’s not a lot of creativity once you make the initial decisions – if we’re doing a grid, then it’s a grid. You don’t get to – halfway down – skip the grid. You have to trust in the path. So by giving people a sensory exhibit that I myself am bodily doing, the physical action I’m engaging people in is my voice in show.
A lot of my work has had me in it because it’s me performing and doing a thing. So I’m curious to see what happens when I remove the physical aspects of myself from my work. Because this is a thing I’ve been trying to figure out: how do I address my own privilege in my work? So removing myself physically from the piece and just interacting with people literally hand-on-hand is a bit of that. My voice is what I’m doing with my hands. The tile façade of the piece is skill execution, and I’m trying to separate the skill execution from my own ego voice.
From Max and Graham’s 100% Humidity, 2014.
KS: Do you have a preferred moisturizing agent?
MK: Coconut oil, without hesitation.
KSL Why do you equate sensitivity with femininity, and how much would you have to change your personal landscape to feel like your hands have been fully shaped by your work?
MK: So, I guess you caught me since I don’t feel comfortable equating sensitivity with femininity. That’s the problem I’m trying to address.
KS: I bring it up because I’ve heard you say that.
MK: I’ve said in the past that I have but now you’ve caught me – and you’re right, I don’t. So, to answer that, I’ve always said that artists make great construction workers because artists have … Attention to detail is nothing more than sensitivity to materials and spatial relations. And sensitivity to spatial relations and the physical world is radically different from sensitivity to another human being. And what I’m trying to change is that in the past I certainly have felt like I have equated sensitivity with femininity, when what I’m trying to say now is that sensitivity is something we should all be exhibiting a little more of. And that’s not to say I’ve had any trouble saying I’m embracing my feminine side, which I think is a loaded phrase to begin with, but I’m certainly trying to figure out how to exist in less of such a stark masculine condition.
I live in a place where discourse isn’t a common everyday occurrence, so a lot of my information comes from the internet or from talking to you. So with me saying you’ve caught me, and I was wrong, do you want to follow up this admission?
KS: How would you describe your transition from the masculine to the feminine?
MK: Well, four years ago now was when I started working in construction, it was the first time I fully engaged in a period of life. Working full-time in construction – it was my whole life, and I wasn’t really making any real solo work aside from working with Graham on some co-op stuff, and it was so wildly fascinating to watch how it shaped my hands.
So, to point out a reason for this show -- the hand shapes the work, the work shapes the hand – it’s some quote from some guy, it’s a philosopher, you can Google it [Ed. Note: it’s Engels]. So now, I’ve exited this period of my life, where every day I was wrist deep in grout and dirt and sawdust and fucking up my hands and cutting my hands. Societally we equate this with masculinity; having these rough gnarled hands that are callused, thick, indelicate and imprecise – this is considered to be such a masculine trait. I have a problem with that because a year and a half ago I started moisturizing and trying to keep my hands supple. I didn’t like that I felt less, through my calluses. I remember there was a time when I was looking down at my hands after tiling for an entire day, and I thought: “I can’t feel very well”. And it caused so many problems in my romantic relationship, my friendships, and my business relationships. Literally, the phrase, “I can’t feel very well,” perfectly describes it. And I hit my breaking point over this last summer where I was like: “I want to feel better.” This works in a lot of ways because I do feel better when I’m connected with other people – and it’s hard because this shouldn’t be considered a necessarily feminine trait. This is that problem that I have. I just think that it would be so boring to only exhibit masculine traits for the rest of my life. My sexuality is fairly linear, but I don’t think your sexuality has to have any specific ties to how you exhibit, carry, perform, act. For me, it all stems from new learning.
Max Kraushaar’s Carson City at NEPO 5K in 2015.
KS: If, as an earth sign, you’ve previously focused on more earth-based work, why have you been transitioning to water as a context and medium?
MK: Contrast, man. And I’ve always had a problem with the fact that Capricorn is considered an earth sign. Over the summer I was living in Twisp and our well was broken. I lived for nine months in Twisp and three to six months before that on Whidbey with no running water. My saving grace while working construction was going home immediately after work and taking a shower. I became such a stickler for it. My bathroom hygiene became such a ritual: shave every other day, wash with chandrika (ayurvedic soap), scrub down in a specific pattern every single time, coconut oil at the end. It became this healing thing I had to do. To lose that for six months was so damaging, and my only respite out in Twisp was to go swimming in the lake after work. Having comfortable access to water taken away from me made me interested in what water is, because all of my work before this point was so soil-oriented.
KS: Where’s the thrill in a smaller exhibition like Two Shelves when you’ve had an entire countryside at your recent disposal?
MK: Working with Joe and Kelly is such a gift because I know that they will allow me any extravagance. The space is so small that anything you do is a real maneuver, and I’m really interested in how attention plays out in a room. Combining theatre with my construction history, I care about where the eye is drawn in a room and how people gravitate toward stuff. So having such a small space with relatively low stakes – and Kelly and Joe are so flexible – using the fact that we are friends, knowing that they trust me, it makes a very logical starting point for the new direction I’m trying to take. It’s the perfect spot for a baby step.
KS: What’s your expectation for your own abilities to impact someone with your work – either within a cultural and emotional expanse, or physically with your own two hands?
MK: Physically is the simplest aspect to answer. I legitimately hope to give people a healing power – the blunt stated objective of the piece is to give people a good feeling, through physical contact, through unique bodily experience. From the physical side of things, it’s just about pure comfort. I want people to walk away from interacting with the piece and think, “my one hand feels really good.” That, for me, ties into the mental side of things because then, all of a sudden, I’ve given people this weird experience wherein one of their arms is different from their other arm. Because everyone only gets to stick their dominant hand in the hole – one hand has been changed, and one has not, so then you have contrast. You can see the before and after in yourself. The dream is that people take home whatever occurs in the space, and it becomes leverage for their own thinking.
Surely, Temple : Max Kraushaar
Opening Reception
Friday, March 25th
7 - 10 pm
On view through April 30th by appointment
[email protected]
