Max Zorn is a Dutch-German artist who has been active in street art at night and

urban art Urban means "related to a city". In that sense, the term may refer to: * Urban area, geographical area distinct from rural areas * Urban culture, the culture of towns and cities Urban may also refer to: General * Urban (name), a list of people ...

since May 2011. His style is notable for its use of brown packing tape as a medium and cutting on

acrylic glass Poly(methyl methacrylate) (PMMA) belongs to a group of materials called engineering plastics. It is a transparent thermoplastic. PMMA is also known as acrylic, acrylic glass, as well as by the trade names and brands Crylux, Plexiglas, Acrylite ...

with a scalpel to create portraits that need lighting from behind to be seen.

Career

Born in Amsterdam, The Netherlands, Zorn's rise began in 2011 after publishing a two-minute self-made video on

YouTube YouTube is a global online video sharing and social media platform headquartered in San Bruno, California. It was launched on February 14, 2005, by Steve Chen, Chad Hurley, and Jawed Karim. It is owned by Google, and is the second mo ...

“Street Art by Max Zorn Making of Tape Art” showing how Zorn hangs his translucent tape art on street lamps. It was picked up by national and international media, and by April 2012 Zorn created over 150 works of tape art. Zorn's first solo show was held in downtown Paris by 2012 in a vintage ballroom, and in that same year he was invited by the Sovereign Art Foundation to feature his first art fair exhibition and live performance at Art Basel Hong Kong which was sold as a unique original for a price that doubled the artwork's value. His in-house gallery Stick Together has exclusively exhibited his work annually since 2013 in Miami during

Art Basel Miami Art Basel is a for-profit, privately owned and managed, international art fair staged annually in Basel, Switzerland; Miami Beach; Hong Kong and from 2022, Paris. Art Basel works in collaboration with the host city's local institutions to help ...

week. Their first Miami exhibition together was held inside Wood Tavern, a small bar in the heart of

Wynwood Art District The Wynwood Art District is a district of the Wynwood neighborhood of Miami, Florida. It is home to over 10 galleries, museums and collections and is known for its street art. It is roughly bounded by North 36th Street (US 27) (north), North 20th ...

that sold out in two days. Stick Together Gallery has since exhibited Zorn's solo showcase of new work at Aqua Art Miami and most recently SCOPE Miami Beach. He has sold out his entire solo exhibitions in Miami with Stick Together Gallery to date. Zorn has worked on large-scale tape art projects with festivals like Amsterdam Light Festival in The Netherlands, the Living Arts Festival in Bangkok, Dubai Canvas in Dubai, and the South By Southwest festival in Austin, Texas. His live artwork performances and pieces have been featured and collected from museums such as MUCA (Museum of Urban and Contemporary Art) in Munich, EYE Filmmuseum, the

Amsterdam Museum The Amsterdam Museum, known until 2010 as the Amsterdam Historical Museum, is an Amsterdam-based museum dedicated to the city's past and present. Due to the renovation of its main location, the museum is temporarily located in the building the Ams ...

and The Dutch Resistance Museum in Amsterdam, the

Cornell Art Museum at Old School Square The Cornell Art Museum at Old School Square is a museum in the Old School Square section of Delray Beach, Florida Delray Beach is a city in Palm Beach County, Florida, United States. The population of Delray Beach as of April 1, 2020 was 66,846 ...

, and the international museum franchise

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. His artworks have sold on auction at Tajan Auction House and Digard Auction Company in Paris, Chiswick Auctions in London and Julien's auction in Los Angeles.

Influences

Zorn’s settings and themes are influenced by a combination of classic novels, nostalgic history and film noir blended together by sepia tones of brown tape illuminated from behind. Zorn says he also finds inspiration from characters in novels produced by writers from The Lost Generation specifically

Ernest Hemingway Ernest Miller Hemingway (July 21, 1899 – July 2, 1961) was an American novelist, short-story writer, and journalist. His economical and understated style—which he termed the iceberg theory—had a strong influence on 20th-century f ...

, John Steinbeck, and

Tom Wolfe Thomas Kennerly Wolfe Jr. (March 2, 1930 – May 14, 2018)Some sources say 1931; ''The New York Times'' and Reuters both initially reported 1931 in their obituaries before changing to 1930. See and was an American author and journalist widely ...

. His fascination with American cityscapes began as a child when his bedroom wallpaper was the New York City skyline. His work also is influenced by

American realism American Realism was a style in art, music and literature that depicted contemporary social realities and the lives and everyday activities of ordinary people. The movement began in literature in the mid-19th century, and became an important te ...

artists such as

Edward Hopper Edward Hopper (July 22, 1882 – May 15, 1967) was an American realist painter and printmaker. While he is widely known for his oil paintings, he was equally proficient as a watercolorist and printmaker in etching. Hopper created subdued drama ...

, however Zorn's process rarely involves any photo reference and most of his artworks are created from scratch.

Works

Zorn's work has been placed in Key West, Florida, Canada and Hong Kong. Through his project Stick Together, his work has also been put on street lamps by fans worldwide, with large-scale street art installed in multiple windowpanes in locations like coffeeshop De Dampkring in

Amsterdam Amsterdam ( , , , lit. ''The Dam on the River Amstel'') is the capital and most populous city of the Netherlands, with The Hague being the seat of government. It has a population of 907,976 within the city proper, 1,558,755 in the urban ar ...

, The Netherlands. In collaboration with Scotch Tape, Max Zorn created the largest outdoor tape art installation he ever made out of brown packing tape, a 40-square-foot freestanding illuminated artwork titled "Huckleberry" for the South By Southwest festival in Austin, Texas, in 2016. His most-valued work sold for $30,000 - a three-panel triptych called "Floating in Time" created in 2018. In a 2016

TEDx Talk TED Conferences, LLC (Technology, Entertainment, Design) is an American-Canadian non-profit media organization that posts international talks online for free distribution under the slogan "ideas worth spreading". TED was founded by Richard Sau ...

in Munich, Germany, Stick Together Gallery owner Audrey Sykes explained that Max Zorn tape artworks have multiple facets, and the simple concept of a universal medium like tape being used in a creative way can be seen as contemporary art,

upcycling Upcycling, also known as creative reuse, is the process of transforming by-products, waste materials, useless, or unwanted products into new materials or products perceived to be of greater quality, such as artistic value or environmental value ...

art, and help a larger audience understand art because of its "wow" factor.

Stick Together

Max Zorn is the founder and creator of the project Stick Together, an online game that spreads street art around the world for free. In 2012 Stick Together became the official name of the in-house gallery that has exclusive access to Max Zorn artworks and at times doubles as an artist agency and representative. Based in Amsterdam, Stick Together Gallery also exhibits online and with art fairs globally.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Zorn, Max Dutch graffiti artists Public art in England Living people Artists from Amsterdam Year of birth missing (living people)