Martin Honert

A Model Scenario of the Flying Classroom 1995 Acrylic on wood, polystyrene, epoxy resin, twelve elements 157½ × 236¼ × 157½ inches; 400 × 600 × 400 cm
Martin Honert is a German sculptor whose fastidiously crafted works are largely inspired by childhood memories recalled from his own early drawings, schoolbooks, and family photographs. Employing illusion, manipulation of scale, and painstakingly rendered surfaces, they are obsessive depictions of essential ideas that connect to collective experiences. “I don’t want my work to get too personal. I may begin with a personal image, but then I try to see how I can formulate a more general one,” he has said. “I don’t want to tell stories, so I try to reduce the image to its purest state.”
Martin Honert (b. 1953) represented Germany at the 1995 Venice Biennale and had his first one-person exhibition in the United States in 1999, at Matthew Marks Gallery. In 2007 the Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden mounted a retrospective, and his work has been the subject of exhibitions at the Hamburger Bahnhof in Berlin, the Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona, the Kunsthalle Düsseldorf, and the Vancouver Art Gallery. Honert lives and works in Düsseldorf and Dresden.
Selected Works
Star (Starling) 1992
Epoxy resin, acrylic, paint, varnishFoto (Photo) 1993
Wood, epoxy resin, oil paint, acrylic paintFata Morgana / Mirage 1996
Transparency mounted on Plexiglas, wood, styrofoam, sand, epoxy resinMutprobe (Fliegendes Klassenzimmer) / Test of Courage (Flying Classroom) 1999
Acrylic on wood and polyester, mixed mediaBande / Gang 2002
Steel, polyester, paintLaterne (Große Version) / Lantern (Large Version) 2000/03
Laserchrome, large opal transparency on aluminum frame, polystyreneRitterschlacht / Knight’s Battle 2003
Polystyrene foam, epoxy resin, steel, aluminum, acrylic, plasticGiants 2007
Mixed mediaGroup of Teachers 2012
Polyurethane, sand, glass, textiles, oil paint