Max Maslansky’s handmade ceramic crabs, a new inclusion in his body of work, will be presented alongside his ongoing painted magazine pages culled from teen spreads. Maslansky’s fascination with crabs, while still mysterious to the artist himself, is rooted in the machinations of desire. While there’s recent scientific evidence suggesting crabs do feel pain, anecdotal impressions of crabs’ ‘zombiness’ persist in his mind: for instance, there’s a video in which a crab is consuming food while being cooked alive.

Similar conclusions could be said of the teen magazine culture that fetishizes pubescence and youths under the guise of advertisement and celebrity worship on behalf of the entertainment industry. Their desiring machines choose to roar as early as possible, almost grazing the realm of sexual taboo without anyone really noticing.

Together, these bodies of work allude to the wordplay with a certain STI, the grumpiness (the crabbiness) that results from pubescent aspirations being unmet, the creepy unknowns of the deep sea—an analog to the potential abyss of desire itself. They further map Maslansky’s understanding of desire through humor, poesis, and formal playfulness.