Maximillion Leszczynski (they/them) is an emerging multi-disciplinary trans non-binary artist based in Montreal, Canada. Their work explores the concept of identity by correlating it with the idea of the landscape; how it can be shaped and transformed through experience and memory. These explorations are found mostly through drawing and sculptural works.
WILDFIREPUNCH is a creative platform that mainly engages with tattooing, but also acts as a personal artistic journal. Built over last 7 years, it acts as a bridging point to clients for collaborative tattoo work that is graphic, colourful and abstract in nature. Max works closely with clients to create custom projects on skin that highlight the client’s unique tastes, identity, and body.
In their personal practice - through drawing, sculpture and installation work - they continue to investigate themes of identity and the narrative of the individual, working in various materials and formats to create objects and drawings of landscapes, both encountered in others and in the self.
Artist Statement
I like the idea that rolling hills are actually rolling; that they are something both lived and imagined. The landscape is not only physical, but becomes a site where perception and memory merge into form.
In my interdisciplinary practice, I use the concept of the landscape as a medium through which I can translate my own internal and external experiences of the world. The terrain of feeling becomes rendered as gesture and form, and is ultimately catalogued and preserved in a perpetual intimate archive, born out of an anxiety knowing that memory is tangible and fallible. Scientific method and imagery play a large influence in the way I experiment with materials while exploring the ways they interact and can be manipulated to best render and preserve my experiences. In my mixed media drawing, I produce vivid agar-plate-like drawings to capture memory, and in sculpture, I play with found materials and textiles in varying tones and colours to produce small hand-held objects; fragments of worlds passing me by.
I also have the pleasure of working with clients in contemporary abstract tattooing; modifying impermanent landscapes with permanent action. It is important for me that the client is a part of the process, accomplishing a collaborative outcome. These experiences shape my practice, as much as my personal encounters with the world. Why not try to record as much of it as I can?
It's a nice view.