Maximum Sorrow

A Magical Place i.

A Magical Place ii.

My first reaction to Kevin Brewersdorf's photography and drawings was, What's so great about these? I kept clicking through the endless images posted on his site maximumsorrow.com and slowly began to get it. What makes this artist's work so compelling to me is his interest in everyday situations and people, and before long I was totally in love with his photos and his entire website. His work also got me thinking that in this cyber era a new type of folk artist is emerging.

Bright Green Workers

On further investigation I found out that Brewersdorf has outlined a spiritual practice of embracing mediocrity, which he calls Maximum Sorrow. For his show Monuments to the INFOSpirit he says: The Marketplace is empty of everything but products; you are the Product, and therefore contribute to the market; Info is the free-flowing energy generated by your production and consumption. The INFOspirit, which encompasses all of these concepts, is both the state between the knowable and unknown, and mediocrity in its purist form.

Kevin Brewersdorf has also constructed a philosophy of "corporate spiritualism." His brand Maximum Sorrow is an exaggeration of the internet artist - the person looking to do it all via the web. Whether a net artist brands them self with a sparse list of links on a humble white field or with loud layers of noise and color or with contrived logos in a bland grid, they are constructing their own web persona for all to see...I think these persona empires are the great artworks of our time, and they inspire me to keep building my own brand.
Check out this interview for more. I find it all very interesting and oddly validating.