Forum 82: Margaret Honda

Margaret Honda, the 82nd installment of our Forum series debuts a new commission by Los Angeles–based artist Margaret Honda (b. 1961, San Diego, California).

For this exhibition, Honda has created a singular, enigmatic sculpture. Painstakingly rendered in lifelike detail including internal organs, and measuring nearly five feet long, the work is modeled after a frog-like form Honda observed in a Renaissance painting at the Pinacoteca Ambrosiana in Milan. The painting, Bramantino’s Madonna delle Torri (1520), depicts the Madonna and Child enthroned; at their feet lies a slain man and a gargantuan frog with anthropomorphic features. At once material and philosophical, Honda’s sculpture prompts us to ponder our relationship to art and the world we make.