Peregrine Honig, A Supplementary Biography

POST BY PADDY JOHNSON

Peregrine Honig, Image via: Poptower.

ART WORLD CRED

Peregrine Honig knows enough about the fine art world to understand that describing her work as “illustration” won't be blue chip gallery friendly, yet rightfully still claims the title herself in her Bravo introduction video. A stable artist at The Dolphin Gallery, an unfortunately named exhibition space that suggests a lower level of work than they actually showcase (it’s still not awesome), Honig is amongst a relatively small number of contestants with gallery representation. I’m not a huge fan of her Marcel Dzama-esque paintings; they tend to look the same but occassionally see some success through their strangeness. Her Olson twins mardi gras cups for example, aren’t bad.

Peregrine Honig, Birds 6

CAREER HIGHLIGHTS

Honig received a positive write up in Chicago Time Out in 2007 for her depiction the Olson Twins and paintings of figures with mental disorders in designer clothing. In 2006, Art in America linked her work to Amy Cutler and Marcel Dzama. We’d add Urban Outfitter artist Amy Ross to that list.

CHARACTER ASSESSMENT

It took Honig two years, but she eventually managed to convince a taxidermist to sell her two twin fawns he'd found inside the belly of a mother deer who'd been hit by a car. She put them in some weird form fitting case in her studio and describes them as her muse. “The twins never opened their eyes yet their wondrous fatality evokes an acceptable alternative to death,” she concludes on her website. This is overstating the process of taxidermy-ing roadkill, but whatever. She's weird.

TYPECAST: The New Age Consumer