Artist, psychiatrist and scholar in psychoanalysis Martin Wilner’s first solo museum exhibition.
© Martin Wilner
Drawing on decades of artistic practise pertinent to the exploration of psychoanalysis, The Case Histories are the latest iteration of Wilner’s ongoing ‘Making History’ project which began in 2002.
In the first decade of this process, Wilner rendered daily drawings based upon events in the world that interested him. Over the course of each month elements of representation, portraiture, caricature, cartography, typography, micrography, and musical composition coalesced into the resulting work.
In 2012 he brought the basic elements of psychoanalysis into his work process by inviting subjects to sit in his place and send him daily correspondence for month-long periods. Together with pen and paper, a psychoanalytic examination of the developing relationships from the course of each intensive month-long correspondence directed and helped produce the resulting work.
The Case Histories, includes the first year of this project, a refinement of Wilner’s two decades of observational and parameter-driven work practice. Subjects in these works include the composer John Zorn, filmmaker Darren Aronofsky, architects Tod Williams and Billie Tsien,
An accompanying fully illustrated publication is available.
Phrenology, 2005, Martin Wilner © the Artist
Martin Wilner (born 1959, New York City) has exhibited his work internationally and has been published extensively. In addition, he is a clinical psychiatrist, Assistant Professor of Psychiatry at the Weill Medical College of Cornell University, and a Scholar in Psychoanalysis affiliated with the New York Psychoanalytic Institute.
His work has been included in “Embracing Modernism” at the Morgan Library and Museum (New York City, 2015), “Day After Day” at the University Art Museum, University (Albany, New York, 2013), “Reinventing Ritual” at the Jewish Museum (New York City, 2009), and “Drawn to Detail” at the DeCordova Museum (Lincoln, Massachusetts, 2008).
His work is in many important private and public collections including the Whitney Museum of American Art (New York City), Los Angeles County Museum of Art (Los Angeles) and the Morgan Library and Museum.
The exhibition is curated by Steven Holmes, curator of the Cartin Collection, Hartford, Connecticut; he is also former curator at the Bass Museum of Art, Miami, where he curated “The Endless Renaissance” and “Human Rites,” and was director of visual arts at Real Art Ways in Hartford from 2000 to 2005. Key exhibitions include “1001 Chairs for Ai Wei Wei” for Creative Time, as well as projects for Palais de Tokyo, and Kunst-Werke Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin.
This exhibition has been made possible by the generous support of the New-Land Foundation, the Cartin Collection, Hales Gallery (London) and Sperone Westwater (New York City).