Simone and Max

Known professionally as Simone and Max, Simone Doing (b. 1990, Hoofddorp, Netherlands) and Max Puchalsky (b. 1990, Madison, Wisconsin) are artists, organizers, and educators who work collaboratively on a range of projects that reflect their interest in empathy, technorealism, and engagement with local community issues. Recent projects have explored such topics as social media mourning, drone warfare, youth incarceration, academic freedom, and climate change tourism through multimedia installations involving video, graphic design, print media, text, photography, audio, software, and readymade assemblage. They continue to explore multisensory environments that take into equal account the set of social conditions produced as well as the images/objects in space.

Solo exhibitions include Diane Endres Ballweg Gallery (2020), Overture Center for the Arts (2019), Abel Contemporary (2017), and Arts + Literature Laboratory (2016). Selected group exhibitions include Pérez Art Museum Miami, İstanbul Modern, CICA Museum (South Korea), ARTCOP21 (Berlin), The Luminary (St. Louis), EFA Project Space (NYC), and Espacio Gallery (London).

Simone and Max have received fellowships, grants, and awards from the Division of the Arts at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, ArtSlant, Madison Arts Commission, Dane County Cultural Affairs Commission, and the Wisconsin Arts Board. Their work has been featured in Vice’s The Creators Project, Amsterdam University Press, and The Huffington Post.

Simone and Max are currently artists-in-residence at the Bayview International Center for Education and The Arts, and MFA candidates at the University of Wisconsin in Madison, where they live and work.

Statement

Our combined backgrounds in visual art, music, teaching, and social science inform the hybrid nature of our creative practice. Working predominantly in new genres, a recurring, formal characteristic of our work is the subversion of technology—often cast as a distancing agent—to facilitate intimate understandings and responses. We embrace a plurality of forms reflective of the degree to which contemporary life is mediated by technological representation, including audiovisual installations, objects, and software.

Recently, we have become inspired by new research that frames empathy not as an inherent trait, but rather as a skill that can be consciously cultivated. As such, our current work is rooted in developing rehearsals for this process. Each piece begins as a research project that explores shared interests in (non)human ethics, civic participation, intersections of privilege, cultural relationships with the environment, and other social territories. We then deploy various devices—absurdity, nostalgia, pop culture, ambient sound, sublime imagery—to disarm viewers and allow them to approach the more serious subject matter embedded within. Through this syncretic and discursive approach, we (re)organize sensory information to encourage audiences to see and feel in new ways.

PLAN YOUR VISIT

Arts + Literature Laboratory is located at 111 S. Livingston Street #100, Madison, Wisconsin, 53703.

Our galleries are open Tuesday through Friday 10am-5pm and Saturday noon to 5pm, and other programs take place throughout the week. Please check the events calendar and education section for details.

CALENDAR

Simone and Max

Statement

PLAN YOUR VISIT

Sign Up For Our Newsletter