Collage artist Máximo Tuja describes himself as a restless person, very curious, and open to mistakes. Known by his moniker Max-o-matic, Tuja arranges and rearranges torn pieces of paper, sometimes emitting details, other times layering pieces on top of each other until his work explodes with images, patterns, and color.
“Organizing chaos is the main task of any collage artists,” he remarked once in an interview with Another Fine Mess. “From millions of possible images (a universe of chaos), we decide to use only a few and combine them in a particular way to make our discourse visible through them.” Tuja defines collage artists in somewhat poetic language, describing them as “editors of reality and builders of new worlds”. “We are twisting the world we know to make a new one come to life,” he says.
Originally from Buenos Aires, since 2002 he lives and works from Barcelona, but his work has reached further than that, showcased in galleries in Barcelona, London, Madrid, New York, Tokyo, Berlin, Rotterdam, Rome, and Lima, to name a few. He has also collaborated with brands as big as Nike, Wired Magazine, Spotify, and Universal Pictures.
Aside from his commercial work, Tuja is also a founding member and director of The Weird Show, showcasing in exhibitions, internet and printed matter the most outstanding contemporary collage worldwide.
Here are some highlights from his Instagram page:
