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10/7/2010 0 Comments The Spirit and the FleshSolo show at the centro cultural de la cooperacion in Buenos Aires, Argentina.
October 7th 2010: http://www.centrocultural.coop/
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5/5/2010 0 Comments City Paper"From a distance, Martha Posner's sculptures are sweetly balletic: Evoking blissful action, the creamy, rustic children's gowns seem to float on their own, dancing like little girls do. But step right up, and beautiful quickly turns grotesque. Posner's 'Memory of Flight' comprises a handful of such 'shape-shifters,' made of found objects, wire, feathers, pigment, synthetic hair and beeswax. The result is a texture not unlike the flesh of picked-over roadkill, wounded and sticky. It's a visceral juxtaposition of sweet and wholly unsavory, yet for the artist, transformation is the key. 'When the shape is shifting, it enters a transient state,' says Posner in her artist statement, 'which transcends categorization as either human or beast.' Whether you choose to get close or keep your distance, you won't be able to look away."
-Carolyn Huckabay, City Paper, May 5th, 2010 6/1/2009 0 Comments Saatchi Online"... intrigued by fairy tales and foreign cultures and tells through her work beautiful but dark stories of lost passion and love, while making an attempt to combine beauty with decay. Most of Posner's creations are photographed in desolate, stark landscapes. The transformed, recycled fabrics are still aesthetically pleasing, although not as objects of fashion. They are robust structures and independent objects in the open space. In terms of shape and memory there are still traces of human presence, but a living human being is superfluous for these items to have justification for existence..."
-Georgia Haagsma, Saatchi Online Gallery Critic Choice, June 2009 7/1/2007 0 Comments Sculpture Magazine"...The drama of Posner's gesturing garments is created not only by one's immediate recognition of the disruption of what is inside the body and what is outside it- with its implications of physical or emotional tensions and violence- but also, and more importantly, it is supported by complex narrative associations that alternately move between myth and autobiography, journalism and fairytales. Buttoned shoes, billowing gowns, and corsets are made of waxed surfaces dripped with yellow and red stains and encircled with clouds of thin, unkempt hair. But these sculptures are not just anthropological observations of how social constraints and expectations can be observed in the conventions of women's and children's clothing. At their best, they activate a net of associations by turning each article of clothing with struggles, emotions, desires, and social consciousness of its own plight."
-Tom Csaszar, July/August 2007 10/1/2005 0 Comments Art News"For several years now, Posner has been creating "unwearable garments"- dresses and cloaks fashioned from fabric strips, thorns, fence wire, wild-rose canes, raw fleece, feathers, and other detritus from her world. The garment as a metaphor for an absent human figure is not a new one; Judith Shea and Louise Bourgeois, to name only two, have explored the possibilities of clothing as sculpture. But Posner manages to bring to the theme a spooky and haunting presence, the kind of emotional rawness that characterizes the best of so-called primitive art."
-Ann Landi, Art News, October 2005 9/20/2002 0 Comments Philadelphia Inquirer"Clothing isn't just to wear, it can be transmuted into sculpture, with all its implications- metaphor, poetry, narrative and form that represents the human body.
Martha Posner doesn't make sculpture from real clothing, she creates forms of wire and stiffened fabric that mimic common garments such as coats and shirts. But while the references in her exhibition at the Allentown Art Museum are familiar, the effects they produce have nothing to do with adornment. They evoke mystery, myth, even a mild terror- one 'shirt' is studded with wicked looking thorns from a locust tree. These are fairy-tale sculptures in the best sense. The half-torsos called "bird shirts" allude to a tale called 'The Wild Swans,' in which the brothers of a beutiful princess are changed into swans. Posner uses materials such as artificial hair, feathers and vines to achieve a primitive look. Yet the pieces communicate fragility and even, in the case of the striking floor-length 'coat,' grace. The spirit of Posner's work is dark, with vague sexual overtones. These are most prominent in a large canoe form festooned with vines and hair and in a scarlet coverlet nestled in a bower of vines. Red Bed looks inviting, but one senses that anyone who napped on it might not wake up." -Edward J. Sozanski, The Philadelphia Inquirer, Friday, September 20, 2002 1/1/2002 0 Comments In Bed With the Wolf"Posner's work process is a fascinating collaboration of mythologies, organic materials, and her own courageous instincts. Drawn from different cultures and religious traditions, the mythologies merge and create their own story, as in paintings of the powerful and seductive."
-Ruth Knafo Setton, from "In Bed With the Wolf- The Art of Martha Posner," Allentown Art Museum, 2002 7/17/1998 0 Comments The New York Times"After a decade in which images of clothing have been enlisted as stand-ins for the human body, Ms. Posner's work has a lot of competition, but by drawing nature into the equation, she gives the metaphor an evocative spin."
-Holland Cotter, The New York Times, July 17, 1998 5/24/1998 0 Comments The New York Times"Clothing as a surrogate for the absent human figure has become something of an artistic cliche over the last 25 years. In the early 1970s, Judith Shea began exploring clothing as sculpture and Robert Kushner began using it as a springboard for painting, to take just two prominent examples of a broader trend. Martha Posner at her best, however, manages to banish familiar images, finding new potential in an old idea"
-Barry Schwabsky, The New York Times, Sunday, May 24, 1998. |
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