AN INTERVIEW WITH MAX KUIJERS 

20 May 2026

1. You’ve been exhibiting since a very young age. How has your relationship with making work changed as you’ve grown up?

Having worked in sculpture for such a long time has allowed me to deeply explore my medium and continually refine the quality of my construction, finish, and complexity. This development, particularly in my woodworking, has enabled me to better highlight the natural beauty of the wood grain and more accurately realise the forms and structures I imagine in my mind. At the same time, this focus on honing my craft has subtly changed the feeling of my sculptures. There is now less emphasis on found objects and less tolerance for imperfect execution — a kind of freedom and spontaneity that I would like to embrace again in future works.

2. Your practice often transforms everyday objects into new imagined beings. What draws you to reinterpreting the familiar in this way?

I am drawn to everyday objects because they already carry a sense of familiarity and history. Found objects often suggest forms or personalities to me naturally, and I enjoy pushing those suggestions further until they become something between a recognisable object and an imagined being. Reinterpreting familiar materials allows me to shift the way people look at them. Something overlooked or functional can suddenly feel alive, humorous, or unsettling when placed in a new context. I also enjoy being able to make use of objects that are already beautifully or skilfully made, allowing their original craftsmanship, surface, or form to take on a completely new role within the sculpture. I enjoy that balance between recognition and imagination, where the viewer can still trace the object’s original purpose while also seeing it transform into something entirely different.

3. You’ve spoken about working with both the restrictions and possibilities of objects. How do those limitations influence your creative decisions?

All objects and materials come with their own restrictions and drawbacks, and learning how to work within those limitations has become an important part of my process. Rather than seeing constraints as obstacles, I often see them as guiding forces that influence the direction of a work and the decisions I make while constructing it. Developing a wide range of methods to overcome these restrictions has been vital. It allows me to choose solutions that can either be bold and visually direct, with a simple aesthetic, or subtle and functional, allowing other aspects of the sculpture to remain the focal point.

4. Your sculptures span materials like wood, steel, acrylics, and found objects. How do you decide what a work needs materially?

I usually begin with a found metal object, which then informs the next stage of the process: shaping the various wooden elements into recognisable forms that guide the viewer toward seeing what I first saw in the object. The wood grain, along with the colour and surface quality of the found object, often becomes a key deciding factor in whether the piece remains exposed wood or is painted. The complexity of the work also strongly influences the finish and choice of materials. Works made from multiple tightly fitting pieces are often spray-painted, as this allows me to create a satisfying colour palette while maintaining clean, precise transitions between colours. Simpler works, often constructed from a single piece, tend to lean more toward rougher textured finishes or intricate hand-painted details created in collaboration with my father or mother.

5. What role does imagination play in your process — Do you start with a clear idea, or does the work evolve through making?

I feel that, across my practice as a whole, there are different subgenres within the work. These are often created in very different ways, with varying degrees of preparation, spontaneity, and imagination involved. Even so, my planning process is usually internal — it looks less like sketching or drawing and more like walking around the studio holding odd pieces of wood and steel, testing relationships between forms.
Often, after completing a highly complex piece that required a great deal of planning, my next work will become far more process-based. In those cases, I might simply begin with a piece of wood and follow where the making leads me, guided only by a vague initial idea.
I also keep a mental backlog of ideas that emerge during daily life and strike me as potential sculptures. I should probably draw them to make sure I do not forget them, but so far I have not gotten around to doing that.