Martin Honert
June 29 to October 14, 2013
 Martin Honert Children’s Crusade, 1985-87 acrylic on polyester and oil on canvas Collection of Raymond Learsy, New York 
Martin Honert Feuer, 1992 painted and illuminated polyester The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, Partial and promised gift of Ivan Moskowitz and Herbert Moskowitz, 98.85 |
Fascinated by the way in which images are captured and how
they evolve within our memories, Martin Honert creates sculptures that are
wonderfully obsessive depictions of ideas connected to collective experience.
Using illusion, manipulations of scale and meticulously rendered surfaces, the
artist attempts to recall-often obliquely-his childhood in post-war Germany. Honert's works draw on family photographs, illustrations from schoolbooks and his own childhood drawings. Unlike many artists who focus on memory, however, he avoids nostalgia, seeking instead to make the image emotionally inert by isolating it from its original context and often dramatically shifting its scale. With this deliberate distancing he attempts, in his words, "to save an image before it dies within me." The first museum exhibition of this artist's work in North America, Martin Honert will feature a series of sculptures that reveal the breadth of Honert's investigations into the potency of remembered images. Organized by the Vancouver Art Gallery and co-curated by Kathleen S. Bartels, director, and artist Jeff Wall. |