Larry Fink / Martha Posner: Flesh and Bone

November 17 2024–April 13 2025

This exhibition explores the creative dialogue between photographer Larry Fink (1941-2023) and sculptor Martha Posner (born 1956) who were romantic partners for more than 30 years. Radically different artists their work nonetheless shares common themes of desire vulnerability and brutality. Both also explore myth throughout their art: Posner explicitly through her re-imagining of female subjects from various legends and mythic traditions; Fink implicitly through his shrewd eye for human impulse folly and bravado qualities he found in almost every scenario no matter how base or exalted.

Both artists embrace the animal world almost as an extension of the human a reflection of their life on a Pennsylvania farm surrounded by other creatures. Their rural existence brought them close to life cycles and earthy needs. Fink began photographing the farm and neighboring community in the 1970s. Posner arrived in the 1990s and immediately took to her surroundings finding magic and transfiguration—processes in which she firmly believes—throughout the woods and meadows.

Viewing these artists side by side reveals subtle and surprising qualities in both. The exhibition will broadly survey each of their independent bodies of work with an eye to how creative partners influence and surprise each other.

This exhibition is organized by Sarasota Art Museum of Ringling College of Art and Design and curated by Peter Barberie the Brodsky Curator of Photographs at the Philadelphia Museum of Art.

Photo Credit: Larry Fink (American 1941-2023). Martha with Coat of My Lost Happiness 1997. © Larry Fink/MUUS Collection.

Host or Publisher Sarasota Art Museum