Martin Honert — Exhibition Invitation Card, Matthew Marks Gallery, New York, 1999

Exhibition invitation card
21 × 14.8 cm
Offset print on card stock; colour illustration to recto, exhibition details to verso
Published by Matthew Marks Gallery, New York
Exhibition dates: 12 November – 24 December 1999
Opening: Thursday 11 November 1999, Saint Martin's Day
Condition: very good; light handling wear, minor surface marks, and faint age-related toning

Produced for Martin Honert's solo exhibition at Matthew Marks Gallery, New York, in 1999. The front reproduces an image of two children taking part in a traditional German Laternenumzug, or lantern procession. The opening date connects directly to Saint Martin's Day, when children traditionally carry lanterns in evening parades.

Honert's work often draws on childhood memory, folklore, schoolroom imagery, and postwar German visual culture. These references are not simply nostalgic. They are reconstructed as staged images and sculptural forms, where memory appears enlarged, clarified, and slightly estranged.

As an invitation, the card acts as a small support for this logic. A children's ritual becomes exhibition image. A date becomes thematic structure. The printed object remains as a reduced record of an event built around memory, folklore, and reconstruction.

Original period item. Shipping and handling included in the listed price.