Maria Porges
MICROSPECTIVE: 35 YEARS
September 2 - October 21
Artist Reception: Saturday, September 16, 2-5pm
Time Heals All Wounds (1992), windows, blackboard, screen printed and applied text and images, 93 x 44 x 6 inches
For over three and a half decades, conceptual artist Maria Porges has experimented with a wide range of sculptural materials, both found and made: ranging from old books, tools and architectural fragments to cast wax, bronze and glass. Often combining objects with language, her work reflects on a number of themes—time and its measure, knowledge as both weapon and tool, family, institutions—with a subversive, sometimes humorous feminism.
The Fourth Wall gallery is pleased to present a retrospective of Porges’s artwork—Microspective: 35 Years.
In discussing the retrospective, Porges says, “Over more than three decades, every body of my work has consisted of a long thought about a set of ideas. There have been some constants: time, the false dichotomy of art and science, the idea of home, things lost and found. The earliest work reflects a scrappy, distinctly Bay Area aesthetic, followed by a desire to make things that were as beautiful as possible so that people would look at these objects until they saw the (important!) messages they carried. Now, I just make things that I want to see in the world, things that seem like they should be here already.”
“The show’s titles have been important, as they often helped guide the direction of my inquiry once the work started coming together. Assembling this ‘microspective’ has been a compelling and sometimes difficult process, as looking back into the past often is. I hope the story makes sense to you.”
Since the late ‘80s, Maria Porges has pursued dual practices as both writer and artist, teaching in both areas at California College of the Arts since 2003. A graduate of Yale University (BA) and the University of Chicago (MFA), her exhibition career of sculpture and works on paper has spanned more than 30 years of solo and group shows at galleries, museums and alternative spaces.
Porges' critical writing appears regularly in such publications as Artforum, Sculpture, Hyperallergic, squarecylinder.com and has been published in a host of other now-defunct art magazines. She has also authored essays for more than 120 exhibition catalogues and multiple book contributions.
Book Scythe (1989) books, oil paint, ax handle. NFS
Telling Time (1997), wood, glass, paint, clockworks, applied image and text, 60 x 25.5
Mestiza (2023), ceramic, from Mashup series
Mochechalice (2022-23), from Mashup drawings: brush and ink on paper 11x14
Reliquary 1 (1995), cast glass, bell jar, cherrywood pedestal
Sororal Twins (2008), graphite and chalk on paper 32 x 24, NFS
Anodyne (2000), cast wax, pigment, applied text, wood, plexiglass 21 x 16 x 5
Hand Language (1998), cast wax, applied text 27 x 42 x 5
Squeeze (2001), hot sculpted glass, steel, text
About the Artist:
Since the late ‘80s, Maria Porges has pursued dual practices as both writer and artist, teaching in both areas at California College of the Arts since 2003. She is graduate of Yale University (BA) and the University of Chicago (MFA). Porges received a SECA award from the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and has twice been in residence at the Headlands Center for the Arts. She was also a finalist for the Creative Capital/Warhol Foundation Art Writer's Grant in 2014 and 2016. Her exhibition career of sculpture and works on paper has spanned more than 30 years of solo and group shows at galleries, museums and alternative spaces.
Pieces made in materials as disparate as the found: old books, windows or furniture--and the formed, such as cast glass, bronze, wax and clay—are connected through a drive to tell stories, whether through things or words. Her current studio work explores the idea of mashups-- vessels which join together elements of objects, both functional and decorative, from different cultures and periods. In complex ink drawings as well as ceramic vessels, she reassembles history both conceptually and physically. Maria Porges's critical writing appears regularly in such publications as Artforum, Sculpture, Hyperallergic, Squarecylinder and has been published in a host of other now-defunct art magazines. She has also authored essays for more than 120 exhibition catalogues and multiple book contributions.