La Forma del Tiempo ("The Shape of Time") brought together new graphite drawings by Max Sir alongside works by the celebrated Chilean hyperrealist painter Claudio Bravo, at Sala Viña del Mar. The exhibition was organized by the Corporación Cultural de Viña del Mar, the Municipio de Cuidados and Fundación Tarquinia, and opened on 20 February 2025 with free admission, running through the end of March.
For Max Sir — born in Viña del Mar and, at the time, based in Lviv and Kyiv amid the war in Ukraine — the show doubled as a homecoming: a return to his native region and to the same coastal landscape where Bravo himself was born, staged as a quiet act of solidarity between his adopted and native countries.
The series takes Bravo's meticulous realism as a point of departure and turns it toward animals — skulls, horses, goats — read not as zoological studies but as vessels for something human and symbolic. Rather than photorealism, Max Sir describes his approach as a "theory of slowness": patient, observational drawing that resists the immediacy of photography and, more recently, AI-generated imagery. Each line is treated as a deliberate pause, a ritual and almost meditative act closer to cave painting or shamanic practice than to documentation.
For Max Sir — born in Viña del Mar and, at the time, based in Lviv and Kyiv amid the war in Ukraine — the show doubled as a homecoming: a return to his native region and to the same coastal landscape where Bravo himself was born, staged as a quiet act of solidarity between his adopted and native countries.
The series takes Bravo's meticulous realism as a point of departure and turns it toward animals — skulls, horses, goats — read not as zoological studies but as vessels for something human and symbolic. Rather than photorealism, Max Sir describes his approach as a "theory of slowness": patient, observational drawing that resists the immediacy of photography and, more recently, AI-generated imagery. Each line is treated as a deliberate pause, a ritual and almost meditative act closer to cave painting or shamanic practice than to documentation.
In the Studio
Drawings
Drawing lets me inhabit time and make it tangible — in a world where everything happens so fast, that slowness is a form of resistance, and a way of enjoying being human. — Max Sir, interview with La Región Hoy, February 2025
"Viña del Mar es la ciudad natal de Max Sir", explica Justo Pastor Mellado, crítico de arte. "A través de la sala de arte de la Corporación Cultural se realiza el gesto de acoger a uno de sus más reconocidos hijos, y se cumple el rito del regreso a casa. Más aún, cuando proviene de una larga estadía en Ucrania, país que le ha brindado su hospitalidad como un representante de nuestra diáspora artística. No cabe duda que su experiencia en la escena artística ucraniana será de gran significación para el acercamiento solidario entre nuestros dos países". — Justo Pastor Mellado, art critic
"Viña del Mar is Max Sir's hometown," explains art critic Justo Pastor Mellado. "Through the Corporación Cultural's exhibition space, a gesture is made of welcoming one of its most recognized sons, fulfilling the ritual of a homecoming — all the more so given it follows a long stay in Ukraine, a country that has offered him its hospitality as a representative of our artistic diaspora. There is no doubt that his experience within the Ukrainian art scene will carry great significance for a closer, more supportive relationship between our two countries." — English translation
Writing in the exhibition catalogue, critic Justo Pastor Mellado described Max Sir's technique as something closer to stitching than drawing — sinuous, interrupted lines that "sculpt time" rather than simply record a subject. For Mellado, the deliberate imperfection in the work, the unfinished gaps between marks, is where the emotion and the artist's personal signature actually live, offering a kind of quiet consolation in the face of a life split between a distant homeland and a place of refuge.
Press
- Espacio Cultural Viña del Mar — Catalogue Read more →
- Espacio Cultural Viña del Mar — Exhibition page Read more →
- G5 Noticias Read more →
- La Región Hoy — Interview Read more →