CORY REYNOLDS | DATE 6/19/2019

Emotional, excessive and disorderly in a good way. 'Less Is a Bore: Maximalist Art & Design' to open at ICA Boston

This photo from Leigh Bowery and Fergus Greer's Looks series (1988–94) is reproduced from Less Is a Bore, published to accompany the ICA Boston’s summer show celebrating Maximalist—almost transgressively busy—art and design (opening June 26). “In the art world,” curator Jenelle Porter writes, “maximalism has yet to attain minimalism’s critical might. Perhaps maximalism is just too emotional, excessive, disorderly, overtly complex and showy… Maximalism is an attitude as much as a method. Maximalism welcomes the world into the studio rather than barring the door. Maximalism looks outward rather than inward to the artist’s spiritual and psychic struggle (as in abstract expressionism). Maximalism is the embrace to minimalism’s exclusions. It is hip-hop compared to punk: multiplying layers of samples versus sixty seconds of three chords.”