Solo Exhibition (Rasom Haarlem)

Max Hikm’s artistic practice is formed at the intersection of painting, abstraction and emotional visual language. His works address questions of identity, belonging, vulnerability and inner transformation. The human condition is not depicted directly but emerges through distorted forms, fragmented bodies, tense gestures and layered surfaces.

The recurring image of the chair occupies a central place in these works. It does not appear as a piece of furniture or a domestic detail. Rather, the chair becomes a metaphor for identity, a structure that supports the person, limits them, defines their position in space and changes together with them. Its form moves from painting to painting, each time taking on a new state. At times it becomes support, at times protection, pressure or a symbol of social structure.

The figure that appears in relation to this image exists in a state of fragility and inner tension. It does not represent a specific person as much as it conveys the feeling of a vulnerable personality trying to preserve itself in a changing world. Between the figure and the chair, a complex relationship unfolds: the desire to belong, resistance to external expectations, the search for stability and the impossibility of fixing one’s own form once and for all.

Deep ultramarine, referring to the intense blue associated with Yves Klein, becomes more than a colour accent in Max’s work. It functions as a space of depth. It creates a sense of immersion, inner infinity and emotional concentration. This colour acts as a field between body and emptiness, between presence and disappearance. Within it, the figure seems to dissolve, resist or search for its own boundaries. Ultramarine intensifies the sense of inner space, where identity is no longer a surface but becomes depth, condition and tension.

An important background to this practice is the experience of living between different countries, languages and cultural contexts. For Max, identity is not permanent or complete. It exists as a fluid condition shaped by memory, personal experience, displacement, loss and connection to place. The war in Ukraine became a turning point for the artist, intensifying questions of home, belonging and self-definition. This experience does not appear in the works as a direct subject but is present as emotional tension and as an inner reason for the search.

Max’s painterly language is built on spontaneity, distortion and layering. His surfaces preserve the trace of gesture, error, fragment and a sense of incompleteness. These elements create a space in which the image does not fully explain itself but remains open to perception. The works do not seek to represent reality literally. They invite the viewer to enter a state where the personal and the collective, the bodily and the symbolic, the visible and the hidden exist at the same time.

In this space, identity unfolds not as an answer but as a process. It is constantly assembled, dissolved and formed again. This state of instability, fragility and inner movement becomes the foundation of the exhibition.