statement

For me, the French Salon remains a symbol of all tendencies in the art world and in society which attempt to dictate an aesthetic beauty norm. For example, I tend to think of our massive fashion and beauty industry as being fueled by contemporary salon mentality. We have a tendency to seek out an expert or chief of police to employ his ruling hand and inforce norms on this rowdy and divergent crowd of struggling and imperfect humanity. And yet, whenever the beauty police become too strong, the heart of the revolution begins to beat louder and the realists come out of the closet to overturn the system.

The question, however, of defining realism right now, is a tricky one. What does our world look like these days? From a 19th century perspective, one would have to say that our concept of reality is warped, fractured or twisted. Or is it perhaps expanding? Our concept of reality now includes vantage points which would have been unrecognizable to our 19th century brothers and sisters. For example, would they have been able to recognize wine flying through the air captured at a millifraction of a second with a high speed camera, as wine at all? No one living today has trouble interpreting this odd shaped image. We cannot define contemporary reality without mention of the internet or photo manipulation. Our minds have learned to form new and unexpected associations between seemingly unrelated images at a constantly increasing rate.

bio

born: 1964, New York,NY, USA

education

New York University, Bachelor of Science, 1986

selected publications

" Lichtenberg Re-loaded" Exhibition Catalog, Göttinger Kunstverlag, Göttingen, Germany
50 Memorable Painters of 2015" Poets and Artists Magazine, Los Angeles, Ca, USA
INPA 5, International Painting Annual, Manifest Press, Cincinnati, OH, USA, 2015
Huffington Post, Priscilla Frank, Susannah Martin- One Woman Paints Nudes- 2014

selected solo or two-person exhibits

" Galerie Stoerpunkt, Susannah Martin- Salon Dogs, Munich, Germany, 2015
Kunsthaus Essen, Susannah Martin Einzelausstellung, Essen, Germany, 2014
Galerie Stephan Stumpf, Susannah Martin - Primordial Tourists, Munich, Germany, 2012
Galerie Barthel, Kinder und Andere Menschen-Susannah Martin, Frankfurt, Germany 2011

selected group shows

Marburger Kunsthalle, " Lichtenberg Re-loaded", Marburg, Germany 2015
Galerie Greulich, " Animal Turn", Frankfurt am Main, Germany, 2015
Sirona Fine Arts, " The Artist¥s Gaze-Seeing Women in the 21st Century", Florida, USA
Manifest Gallery, " NUDE 7 ", Cincinnati, OH, USA 2015