The Weird Show Gallery

How did you first get involved with The Weird Show?

I found Max’s work on Tumblr ages ago. Soon after I asked him to be in a collage exhibition I was curating at Cinders Gallery in Brooklyn. This led to another in Berlin (where I met Max in person) and then Ireland. 

What's the story behind this piece?

This was one of the images I created in 2021 for an essay in Document Journal entitled The Myth of the Lone Creative Genius. It compared traditional solitary visionaries to modern, tech driven creators who are more collaborative in their process.

What do you especially like about this piece?

I particularly like the simplicity of this one. There are minimal pieces with relaxed cuts. If I recall, I had just found an oversized Michelangelo book and used Sistine Chapel imagery for this series.

What's changed at TWS since you first got involved?

Well, I have been involved since day one... so TWS has grown a lot. I’m continually impressed by the amount of content they produce. And Max’s curation, as always, is excellent.

How did you first get involved with The Weird Show?

I saw it from afar, liked what it was doing, didn't understand why it was weird, got interviewed, then understood. The good kind of weird.

What's the story behind this piece?

I made this piece for my platinum birthday. (when your age matches your birth year - 62/1962 in my case)

What do you especially like about this piece?

My work usually documents something even if the something is just a feeling, but this one is extra special for me because it's a (very) minimalist timeline of my art/life to that point - a point at which I was thinking about new directions in technology (AI) and how that might affect my work.

How did you first get involved with The Weird Show?

I actually met Rubén B long before The Weird Show even came into being, he was the one who introduced me to Max. We started out collaborating on a personal editorial project, and through that process we got to know each other better. Little by little, a friendship grew alongside the work, especially as we began taking on more ambitious exhibition projects together. In 2011, I was invited to be part of the very first The Weird Show exhibition, and since then I’ve collaborated with Max whenever I’ve had the chance, contributing in any way I can.

What's the story behind this piece?

There isn’t a specific story behind it. I usually start working while flipping through magazines or printed pages I’ve previously selected. As I go through that material, sometimes certain images just jump out at me, and I instantly begin to visualize them assembled together. I think I almost always begin as if I’m simply doing an exercise, and somehow it ends up becoming a finished piece, a final artwork.

What do you especially like about this piece?

Without a doubt, what I love most about this piece is the way it’s cut. It had been a long time since I last worked with scissors, and I remember feeling a kind of fear, worried that I might have lost my touch. I keep becoming more and more demanding with myself, constantly trying to perfect each cut, and sometimes that pressure actually holds me back from creating. I clearly remember patiently enjoying every single cut, and feeling genuinely satisfied as I looked at all those tiny pieces laid out in front of me, noticing how meticulously trimmed they were, at least in my eyes. The composition turned out to be very harmonious, just as I had imagined it, with a soft and beautiful color palette. It felt like a puzzle where every piece fit perfectly into place. I fell in love with Jaggernauta. I’m truly fascinated by this piece, and I’m very proud of it.

How did you first get involved with The Weird Show?

I believe my first involvement with The Weird Show was in 2014, when I co-curated the exhibition at The Invisible Dog Art Center. I had seen some of the previous group shows TWS had produced and really wanted to get involved. I loved the punk aesthetic and the global, grassroots energy it embodied. I've been working in collage since the late ’80s, and I was impressed by TWS’s ability to transform an obscure medium into a truly global movement. Honestly, that show remains one of the most memorable moments of my practice. It re-energized my own work and, more importantly, helped foster an incredible collage community that continues to grow.

What's the story behind this piece?

As with so many of my works, the story is really about spontaneity and living in the moment. I honestly have no idea where I’m going until I get there. I sort of let the scraps reveal the message and overall meaning. I often think of my approach as a “paper collage seance” where I’m channeling a mood, a feeling, or some other outside inspiration like music. In many ways, my work is a document of sorts of this process, but I also believe they move deeper into places that are hard to explain. I feel this piece explores a space where beauty and brutality are perhaps the same thing. Or at the very least, intertwined in a fragile and unstable movement that evolves over time. It’s hard to say, really. I prefer my work to be slightly undefined. 

What do you especially like about this piece?

I know a piece is finished when a sense of calm settles over me. This work, in particular, was a chaotic struggle to produce, but the final result feels truly ethereal. I believe that process is very evident here. There’s also something dynamic and strangely natural about the way all the disparate elements come together. Honestly, if a work is difficult to describe yet still provokes a feeling, it’s probably a success. This piece definitely falls into that category.

How did you first get involved with The Weird Show?

I curated the first Weird exhibition, which I called The International Weird Collage Show—a reflection of my fondness for long, official, ministerial-sounding names. That show became the seed for what eventually grew into The Weird Show. What started with that grandiose title has become more than just exhibitions thanks to my great friend, and for many years partner, Max-o-matic.

What's the story behind this piece?

This piece emerged during a collage workshop at Los Raros/Las Raras in Valladolid, hosted by Max-o-matic and Cless. The theme for this one was "Simplicity," which pushed me to strip away excess and focus on essential elements—fabric, light, form. What began as an exercise in material exploration became something more—a meditation on concealment and chaos that felt worth developing further. Sometimes the most compelling work comes from moments of creative experimentation, where you're responding intuitively to materials and discovering what emerges. The title and conceptual framework came later, as I reflected on what the piece had already revealed about itself.

What do you especially like about this piece?

What draws me to this piece is the tension between concealment and revelation. The fabric obscures the figure while becoming its own sculptural form, creating a visual language that's both intimate and distant. I'm interested in how it refuses clarity—existing in that space between the visible and hidden, the ghayb. The monochromatic palette strips everything down to texture, light, and gesture, while the draped material creates 'abath—a beautiful chaos, disorder with clear intention.

How did you first get involved with The Weird Show?

In 2010, Rubén B. and I were at his apartment in Madrid and in about 10 minutes we decided to create a platform to explore contemporary collage. A few days later, he came up with the name, bought the domain and built the first website from a WordPress template. Days after that we were already interviewing artists. The first ones, I'm 99% sure, were Fred Free and Jesse Draxler. The truth behind this is that we had been very inspired by what James Gallagher had been doing at that time with the Cutters exhibition series, among other collage-related projects he was leading. I still feel we're following the path he started in the late 2000s.

What's the story behind this piece?

I made this paper collage in late 2017/early 2018 and exhibited it in The Age of Collage show (curated by the one and only Dennis Busch) in Hamburg, along with 3 other pieces from this series. One (or two, not sure) had been sold and the remaining ones got lost when they were shipped back to me. So these are ghost artworks inhabiting a liminal space between our world and other worlds. I always wonder if anybody has found them. And if someone did, what they must have thought. Were these collages worth keeping or did they just throw them in the recycling bin?

What do you especially like about this piece?

I like the fact that it exists and doesn't at the same time. Can I relate this to the Schrödinger's cat thing? Until I know (which will most probably be never), this exists and doesn't exist. It's a quantum collage.