I had the privilege of living with Máximo Elizondo for a year in Solo, Indonesia. I met him in the basement of a large theatre. Like myself, he had just arrived in the city, so we decided to find living arrangements together. We ended up in a massive boarding house—a kos—and spent the year idling in that airy, strange building. Living below us was our landlord, a sour old Javanese woman who lived out the last days of her life there, all the while we were living the prime of our own two floors above. The year was marked by death but also by new life, as our neighbourhood had no shortage of children who would fly kites high into the sky in the late orange afternoons. The faces of our neighbours became friendly and familiar. The rain came, volcanos spewed smoke and erupted, and we slowly settled into Javanese life. Throughout this timeless, dream of a year, Máximo painted. And drew. And sang loudly in his operatic voice that would at times enter into childlike falsetto. I was privileged to witness the effect that Java had on this brilliant artist, seeing his work sink into the images and ideas of Indonesia as the year cycled on. Most importantly, I made what I know will be a lifelong friend. I am honoured to have lived with such a talented individual, and I look forward to the moment when our paths cross again.

The best way that I can describe the work of Máximo is that it attempts a synthesis of the naive with the abstract. This is itself a novel approach, for the two concepts—the innocent and the intellectual—seem to exist in incommensurable worlds. The world of the naive is currently carried through the comic art movement, supported by an upcoming generation of artists who are apathetic, if not disdainful, of the inflated traditions of the high modern era. They might claim that these traditions, as remnants of the Enlightenment, are too removed from everyday life, from the streets, from real, working people. To the comic artist, street artist, naive artist, or young artist in general, the concept of art as something necessarily intellectual and sophisticated is but a bleeding heart of irony, beating its last beats inside the confused walls of university fine art faculties. These walls, however underfunded, happen to be the very home of the abstract, where art was institutionalized, turned in on itself, turned upside down, and stretched to the absurd limits of its own meaning.

It seems unwarranted, then, that these two separate worlds could ever hope to find union. But Máximo Elizondo finds a way to bring them together. He himself began a formal artistic education at the Universidad de Buenos Aires and the Instituto Universitario Nacional del Arte. However, he balanced the institutional side of his artistic education by studying closely with Maria José Fernández de la Puente and maestro Ricardo Garabito. As such, his work never seems out of touch or attempting to take itself too seriously. It refuses to intellectualize by being playful. It is layered, ambiguous, and challenging. This balanced approach offers a kind of universality to Elizondo’s work. Whenever I would question him about the meaning of something in a painting or drawing, or whenever I would suggest a direct connection between an image in one of his works with reality, Maximo would answer me with what was almost a diplomatic ambiguity, providing a politician’s non-answer. Even discussing opinions and matters unrelated to his work, Máximo would give credence to alternate perspectives and viewpoints. I believe that he himself sees reality as fundamentally ambiguous, human opinions as skewed fractions of a large, more complex picture, and his art reflects his philosophy. It is non-judgemental, non-threatening, and celebratory of the weirdness of the world, the multiple ways of looking at it and living in it. I am grateful to have learned, both from Máximo’s art and from getting to knowing him in person, the joy of this almost oracular worldview. Especially in our situation, of being thrown into to an unfamiliar place and culture, I learned from Máximo that an open, metaphorical mind, was essential in transforming our North and South American worldviews into something hopefully a little more Javanese. In this regard, Máximo Elizondo’s work from Indonesia evolves as he absorbs the nuances, contours, and colours of Java into his being, integrated them into his artistic output.

There are various themes explored in Máximo Elizondo’s work. The infinite imagination of the child coming to terms with the realities of nature and the psychological landscape of sexuality are themes that, to me, stand in the forefront. In dealing with human figures, Máximo splays out our organs, shamelessly emphasizes the strangest body parts, such as our mouths and eyes, and warps our bodies to achieve unique emotional perspectives. In his more abstract works, figures hide underneath other figures and connect with one another in a whirlpool of thought, neither wholly representative of conscious experience nor that of subconsciousness. Archetypal elements in nature, like the sun, are often anthropomorphized, and share the same space with ordinary people. I will not go into Máximo’s depiction of women in his art. One year of knowing a person is not enough to theorize about something as complex as that! What I will say is that his figures change with his mode of being, as Elizondo’s reality shifts from larger than life to small and insignificant, so too do the images that end up on canvas. In the truest sense, his art is a part of himself, a portal to his brilliant imagination. In Solo, Máximo would regularly insist, with a mate in his hand, «I have to work.» Aku harus kerja. I believe that when he says this, he does not just mean that he has to finish his painting for an upcoming project or exhibition. Rather, the very act of working—the process of creation—is how Máximo finds meaning in life. Thank you Máximo, for sharing that meaning with us.

James Billingsley

August, 2011