September 2025: Maxfield Strauss - Mixed Media with Scholastic Globes

I like maps, charts, and diagrams. There is something so official in the way they lay out the ‘truth’, which ironically, underscores the fragility and fleeting nature of human knowledge. Through arrogance or naivete (or likely a mix of the two), we strive to quantify our world in absolute terms, while standing in the shadow of the immutable truth that change is the only constant. “This is the best we could do with what we knew at the time,” these schemas seem to suggest in a charming portrayal of human patheticism (but what choice do we have?). In this light, maps take on the same temporal relevance as a “wet paint” sign on a park bench: paint dries, and boundaries shift (assuming the boundaries were ‘accurate’ to begin with).
To cut apart these globes initially seemed irreverent, but there was something that was incredibly freeing in the deconstruction and reconstruction process. Cartographic authority was supplanted by the beauty which lies between order and disorder. Rigid truths gave way to a voice which haphazardly declared, “We are imperfect, and yet perfectly wonderful.”