Maria Porges

Maria Porges (born 1954) is an American artist and writer based in the San Francisco Bay Area. As an artist she is known for the prominent use of text in her visual works, which encompass sculpture, works on paper and assemblage and have an epistemological bent. As a critic Porges has written for Artforum, Art in America, Sculpture and SquareCylinder, among other publications.

Maria Porges, Natural Magic: Cures for Modern Maladies, wax wood, metal leaf, 30" x 46" x 7", 2000. Porges is best known for the curiously labeled wax bottle sculptures she created throughout the 1990s and early oughts, together with the tools and weapons fashioned from books that appear throughout her career. The work is considered to be provocative in its method of inquiry and redefinition of artistic syntax. She has exhibited at SFMOMA, the deYoung Museum and Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum, among other venues. Porges lives in Oakland and is a professor at the California College of the Arts. Subsequent solo exhibitions took place at the di Rosa Center for Contemporary Art (2008) and Sanchez Art Center (2016), and galleries such as John Berggruen (1995–2003), Seager Gray (2016) and Fourth Wall (2023, retrospective) in the Bay Area, Her work has appeared in surveys at White Columns, SFMOMA, the deYoung Museum, Aldrich Museum

Maria Porges, Squeeze, hot sculpted glass with wall text, 12" tall, 1993–2001. Porges' artworks vary widely in their aesthetic approach. Reviewers characterize her bottle sculptures as possessing a formal sensibility akin to the still lives of Giorgio Morandi,

Earlier work: 1988–2009 Porges began receiving critical attention in the late 1980s. Early works were largely assemblages, several of which featured text in conjunction with tools. The Tools of Knowledge (1988) featured axe handles bearing books as blades. The books were sculpted into wedge shapes and partly retained their covers, revealing their former roles as dictionary and political tome. Old Saws (1990) featured common proverbs inscribed on a group of rusty saws that were hung from the gallery ceiling. Books and tools—especially tools with weapon-like qualities—are recurrent motifs in Porges' work. Appearing in groups, the bottles bore thought-provoking labels and evoked apothecary medicines in their arrangement on shelves and in cabinets. Those that appeared in her 2000 show "Miraculous Vessels" were described by New York Times critic Ken Johnson as "poetic" and "metaphysical," suggesting such impalpable contents as "Youth With Wisdom," and "Solitude Without Loneliness."

Later work: 2010–present

After exhibiting a 15-year survey of her works in wax, Porges turned to other forms. Her 2016 exhibition at Seager Gray gallery introduced two new series, "Shortest Stories"—a collection of collages, sculptures and brief original writings—and "Exhortations"—a continuation of Porges' book-tools motif in the form of wall-mounted sculptures. Sculpture, Art in America, Artweek, American Craft, The New York Times Book Review, Hyperallergic and SquareCylinder, among other publications. She has written numerous catalogue and book essays, for galleries, artists and institutions such as the San Francisco Museum of Craft + Design, Sonoma Valley Museum of Art, Nevada Museum of Art and De Saisset Museum, and created audio tour scripts for museum exhibitions across the United States.

Collections and recognition Porges’s work belongs to the public art collections of the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, Monterey Museum of Art, Oakland Museum of California, Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art and Yale University Art Gallery, among others.

She has been recognized with a SECA Art Award (Society for the Encouragement of Contemporary Art) from SFMOMA (1992), grants from the California Arts Council (1990) and Center for Cultural Innovation (2014), and the 2024 College Art Association Distinguished Teaching of Art Award.