Martin Honert
Encyclopedia
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
artist
Artist
An artist is a person engaged in one or more of any of a broad spectrum of activities related to creating art, practicing the arts and/or demonstrating an art. The common usage in both everyday speech and academic discourse is a practitioner in the visual arts only...
based in Düsseldorf
Düsseldorf
Düsseldorf is the capital city of the German state of North Rhine-Westphalia and centre of the Rhine-Ruhr metropolitan region.Düsseldorf is an important international business and financial centre and renowned for its fashion and trade fairs. Located centrally within the European Megalopolis, the...
. He is known for making veristic sculpture
Sculpture
Sculpture is three-dimensional artwork created by shaping or combining hard materials—typically stone such as marble—or metal, glass, or wood. Softer materials can also be used, such as clay, textiles, plastics, polymers and softer metals...
s of memories or images related to his childhood. Honert is represented by the Matthew Marks Gallery
Matthew Marks Gallery
Matthew Marks is an art gallery located in the New York City neighborhood of Chelsea. Founded in the early 1990s by Matthew Marks, it specializes in modern and contemporary art in a variety of media: including painting, sculpture, photography, installation art, film, and drawings and prints...
in New York.
Work
Honert was born in Bottrop, Germany and attended the Staatliche Kunstakademie Düsseldorf from 1981-1988, taking his master classMaster class
A master class is a class given to students of a particular discipline by an expert of that discipline—usually music, but also painting, drama, or any of the arts....
with Fritz Schwegler in 1985. Many of his sculptures recall the readymades of Marcel Duchamp
Marcel Duchamp
Marcel Duchamp was a French artist whose work is most often associated with the Dadaist and Surrealist movements. Considered by some to be one of the most important artists of the 20th century, Duchamp's output influenced the development of post-World War I Western art...
, often changing their scale. Drawings the artist made as a child of Santa Claus
Santa Claus
Santa Claus is a folklore figure in various cultures who distributes gifts to children, normally on Christmas Eve. Each name is a variation of Saint Nicholas, but refers to Santa Claus...
were transformed into a life-sized sculpture for his 2004 show at Matthew Marks (Catalogue Raisonné no. 43). Unlike most artists that invoke the readymade tradition, with the notable exception of Robert Gober
Robert Gober
Robert Gober is an American sculptor. His work is often related to domestic and familiar objects such as sinks, doors, and legs.-Life and work:...
, Honert actually fabricates all of his works from scratch by himself, which also accounts for the artist’s small output.
His early sculptures like Red Upholstered Chair and Table with Jell-O
Jell-O
Jell-O is a brand name belonging to U.S.-based Kraft Foods for a number of gelatin desserts, including fruit gels, puddings and no-bake cream pies. The brand's popularity has led to it being used as a generic term for gelatin dessert across the U.S. and Canada....
(both 1983) (Catalogue Raisonné nos. 4 & 5) are highly realistic handmade sculptures based on drawings Honert made of his time spent in boarding school
Boarding school
A boarding school is a school where some or all pupils study and live during the school year with their fellow students and possibly teachers and/or administrators. The word 'boarding' is used in the sense of "bed and board," i.e., lodging and meals...
in Westphalia
Westphalia
Westphalia is a region in Germany, centred on the cities of Arnsberg, Bielefeld, Dortmund, Minden and Münster.Westphalia is roughly the region between the rivers Rhine and Weser, located north and south of the Ruhr River. No exact definition of borders can be given, because the name "Westphalia"...
. Both pieces appear as the ordinary objects their titles describe: a red upholstered chair and a table with a plate of real Jell-O resting on top of it. Yet, the artist also installed neon tube lights
Neon lighting
Neon lighting is created by brightly glowing, electrified glass tubes or bulbs that contain rarefied neon or other gases. Georges Claude, a French engineer and inventor, presented neon tube lighting in essentially its modern form at the Paris Motor Show from December 3–18, 1910...
into the backrest and seat of the chair to make the upholstery glow, and a motor hidden in the table causes the Jell-O to tremble. Furthermore, “Table with Jell-O is the usual height of a table, but in its other dimensions it departs from the usual sizes, seeming too large for one person but too small for two or four.” The luminous chair and jiggling Jell-O introduce the element of memory into the works. We are not simply seeing objects in the present, instead the lighting of the chair, for example, locates the chair under specific lighting conditions, at a certain time. But when and where these particulars refer to remain unclear, calling into question where the truth in memory resides: is it in memory’s attachment to historical objects or lived experiences; or, is lodged in the process of remembering itself?
In recent years, Honert’s art has verged on installation
Installation art
Installation art describes an artistic genre of three-dimensional works that are often site-specific and designed to transform the perception of a space. Generally, the term is applied to interior spaces, whereas exterior interventions are often called Land art; however, the boundaries between...
. A Model Scenario of the Flying Classroom (Catalogue Raisonné no. 30) made for the German Pavilion at the 1995 Venice Biennale
Venice Biennale
The Venice Biennale is a major contemporary art exhibition that takes place once every two years in Venice, Italy. The Venice Film Festival is part of it. So too is the Venice Biennale of Architecture, which is held in even years...
borrows its subject and title from a children’s book by Erich Kästner
Erich Kästner
Emil Erich Kästner was a German author, poet, screenwriter and satirist, known for his humorous, socially astute poetry and children's literature.-Dresden 1899–1919:...
entitled The Flying Classroom. It telescopes the entire plot of one scene from the novel in which Kästner describes a rehearsal for a play that the characters put together. Despite the description’s length and detail, the reader learns little about the play’s content or actual performance. Honert’s art again finds itself trying to represent what is specific—the detailed description of the play’s rehearsal—but nonetheless vague—the little information gained about the play’s particulars.
Selected exhibitions
1992- Biennale of SydneyBiennale of SydneyThe Biennale of Sydney is an international festival of contemporary art, held every two years in Sydney, Australia. It is the largest and best-attended contemporary visual arts event in the country...
, Sydney, Australia
1993
- Galleria Massimo de Carlo, Mila
1994
- Ecole nationale des beaux-arts de BourgesBourgesBourges is a city in central France on the Yèvre river. It is the capital of the department of Cher and also was the capital of the former province of Berry.-History:...
, FranceFranceThe French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
1995
- Venice BiennaleVenice BiennaleThe Venice Biennale is a major contemporary art exhibition that takes place once every two years in Venice, Italy. The Venice Film Festival is part of it. So too is the Venice Biennale of Architecture, which is held in even years...
1996
- Martin Honert, Collier Schorr, Tom Gidley, Entwistle Gallery, LondonLondonLondon is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
- Views from Abroad: European Perspectives on American Art 2, Whitney Museum of American ArtWhitney Museum of American ArtThe Whitney Museum of American Art, often referred to simply as "the Whitney", is an art museum with a focus on 20th- and 21st-century American art. Located at 945 Madison Avenue at 75th Street in New York City, the Whitney's permanent collection contains more than 18,000 works in a wide variety of...
, New York - Fliegende Klassenzimmer (The Flying Classroom), Arnolfini Gallery, BristolBristolBristol is a city, unitary authority area and ceremonial county in South West England, with an estimated population of 433,100 for the unitary authority in 2009, and a surrounding Larger Urban Zone with an estimated 1,070,000 residents in 2007...
1997
- Young German Artists 2, Saatchi GallerySaatchi GalleryThe Saatchi Gallery is a London gallery for contemporary art, opened by Charles Saatchi in 1985 in order to exhibit his collection to the public. It has occupied different premises, first in North London, then the South Bank by the River Thames and currently in Chelsea. Saatchi's collection, and...
, London - Pro Lidice: 52 Artists from Germany, The Czech Museum of Fine Arts, PraguePraguePrague is the capital and largest city of the Czech Republic. Situated in the north-west of the country on the Vltava river, the city is home to about 1.3 million people, while its metropolitan area is estimated to have a population of over 2.3 million...
- Fata Morgana, Museu d'Art Contemporani de Barcelona
1999
- Matthew Marks
- Museum of Fine Arts, Centre de Cultura Contemporània de BarcelonaCentre de Cultura Contemporània de BarcelonaThe Centre de Cultura Contemporània de Barcelona is one of the most visited exhibition and arts centres in the city of Barcelona.Situated in the Raval district, the Centre’s core theme is the city and urban culture...
, Palazzo GrassiPalazzo GrassiPalazzo Grassi is an edifice in the Venetian Classical style located on the Grand Canal of Venice, northern Italy...
, VeniceVeniceVenice is a city in northern Italy which is renowned for the beauty of its setting, its architecture and its artworks. It is the capital of the Veneto region...
2000
- Interventions, Milwaukee Art MuseumMilwaukee Art MuseumThe Milwaukee Art Museum is located on Lake Michigan in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.Beginning around 1872, multiple organizations were founded in order to bring an art gallery to Milwaukee, as the city was still a growing port town with little or no facilities to hold major art exhibitions...
- Galerie Gebr. Lehmann, Dresden
2001
- Tenth Anniversary Exhibition: 100 Drawings and Photographs, Matthew Marks Gallery, New York
2002
- Kunstverein Hannover
2004
- Matthew Marks, New York
2005
- Elements of Nature, La Cité de l'énergie, Shawinigan, QuébecQuebecQuebec or is a province in east-central Canada. It is the only Canadian province with a predominantly French-speaking population and the only one whose sole official language is French at the provincial level....
2007
- Summer Exhibition 2007, Royal Academy of Arts, London
- Staatliche Kunstsammlungen DresdenStaatliche Kunstsammlungen DresdenStaatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden is a cultural institution in Dresden, Germany, owned by the State of Saxony. It belongs to the most renowned and oldest museum institutions in the world, originating from the collections of the Saxon electors in the 16th century .Today, the Dresden State Art...
- Matthew Marks
Articles on Martin Honert
- Art in Review: Martin Honert. New York Times, October 19, 2007, sec. E
- Groys, Boris. Mind’s Eye Views. ArtforumArtforumArtforum is an international monthly magazine specializing in contemporary art.-Publication:The magazine is published ten times a year, September through May, along with an annual summer issue...
, February 1995, 52-61. - Kazakina, Katya. German Artists’ Big Bearded Hikers, Poetic Palaces: Chelsea Art
- Pym, William. Martin Honert. Artforum, October 6, 2007, www.artforum.com.
- Stals, José Lebrero. Martin Honert: Out of the Deadpan. Flash Art, April 1993, 88-89.
- Boucher, Brian. Martin Honert at Matthew Marks. Art in AmericaArt in AmericaArt in America is an illustrated monthly, international magazine concentrating on the contemporary art world, including profiles of artists and genres, updates about art movements, show reviews and event schedules. It is designed for collectors, artists, dealers, art professionals and other...
, February 2008, 140-141.
Books on Martin Honert
- Amman, Jean-Christophe. Martin Honert. FrankfurtFrankfurtFrankfurt am Main , commonly known simply as Frankfurt, is the largest city in the German state of Hesse and the fifth-largest city in Germany, with a 2010 population of 688,249. The urban area had an estimated population of 2,300,000 in 2010...
: Museum für Moderne KunstMuseum für Moderne KunstThe Museum für Moderne Kunst in Frankfurt am Main was founded in 1981. The museum was designed by the Viennese architect Hans Hollein. Because of its triangular shape, it is called "piece of cake"....
, - Honert, Martin. Ein szenisches Modell des “Fliegenden Klassenzimmers” nach der Erzählung von Erich Kästner. Ostfildern, Cantz Verlag, 1995.
- Honert, Martin. Catalogue Raisonné. Cologne: Verlag der Buchhandlung Walther König, 2004.
- Osterwald, Tilman. Martin Honert. Bonn: Institute für Auslandsbeziehungen, Autoren, Photographen und VG Bild-Kunst, 1998.
External links
- Martin Honert at the Matthew Marks Gallery
- Martin Honert at Johnen Schoettle
- Martin Honert on ArtFacts.net
- Martin Honert on ArtNet.com
- Further information from the Saatchi Gallery