Max Manning (b. 1988) is a Houston-based painter whose practice he describes as “algorithmic abstraction”, studio-built systems that he deliberately disrupts to create compositions where loosely figurative fragments, patterns, and color fields collide. Working in series, Manning sets up rule-driven visual frameworks such as grids, repeated motifs, cut-outs, and layered shapes, and then interrupts them through shifts in palette, gesture, and scale. The result is a retro-contemporary language: paintings that acknowledge a world shaped by data and screens while insisting on the tactility, stillness, and breath of paint.
Manning earned a BFA in Two-Dimensional Studies from Bowling Green State University (2011) and an MFA from the University of Cincinnati (2014). His work has been exhibited widely in the U.S. and abroad and gained early institutional and critical attention through selection for the 2017 Texas Biennial, curated by Leslie Moody Castro, with press coverage in Texas arts media.
Career milestones include representation with TW Fine Art (Brisbane) and Todd Weiner Gallery (Kansas City), where bodies of work from 2015–2024 trace the evolution of his patterned, color-forward vocabulary. Exhibitions and placements have spanned artist-run and institutional contexts, including The Contemporary Arts Center (Cincinnati), Trestle Gallery (Brooklyn), Durden and Ray (Los Angeles), Lawndale Art Center (Houston), Espacio 20/20 (San Juan), Le Praticable (Rennes), and Saatchi Gallery (London). His paintings have also been profiled by independent outlets and catalogs such as Maake Magazine, Fresh Paint Magazine, and Studio Visit Magazine.
Across these platforms, Manning has maintained a clear studio ethos: to “paint through the questions” of life lived alongside algorithms. Instead of reproducing digital aesthetics, he uses rule sets to destabilize them—allowing glitches, misalignments, and pauses to surface. The work’s visual “systems” act less like predictive code and more like open, humanized structures where attention can rest. This stance has resonated with curators and collectors attuned to abstraction’s current arc: grounded in art-historical form, responsive to contemporary cognition, and committed to the slow time of looking.
