Harriet Poznansky: Pin Up

22 Feb-23 Mar 2025

PV 21 Feb 2025, 6-9pm

Overview

Coleman Projects is delighted to present Pin Up, a solo exhibition by Harriet Poznansky.

Coleman Project Space opens its 2025 programme with Pin Up, a multi-disciplinary exhibition by Harriet Poznansky exploring themes of female subjectivity, desire and autonomy through a compelling mix of painting, drawing and sound. With this series, which began development during the gallery's 2024 summer residency, Poznansky examines both historical and contemporary views of what it means to exist in a world repeatedly shaken by external forces. 

In the main gallery, large-scale acid-etched drawings on corrugated steel and paintings on polyester restoration fabric reimagine imagery from a 2019 soft-porn calendar found in an abandoned garage in 2020. Staged photos transform into dreamlike explorations of body and identity. These themes continue to evolve in large-scale paintings displayed in the Shed space. 

Despite allusions here to industrial time-keeping and pandemic stasis, there is a restlessness to Poznansky’s female leads, or anti-muses, resistant perhaps to being ‘given’ a final form or to fit within the male gaze. “These women are not static beings – they are on the verge of transformation. My work plays with the space between the surreal and the real, between who they are and who they might become,” she explains. 

Drawing on the feminist theory of the 'split self', Poznansky examines the tension between individuality and the societal construction of female bodies, highlighting how women internalise self-surveillance as a result of the 'beauty myth'. For Poznansky, the body is more than a physical form; it is a medium for experiencing and connecting with reality, shaped by the archetypal ways it has been represented. 

The installation extends into Coleman’s Shed space, where a sound piece - crafted with pickup mics and an electric current reader - captures its raw acoustics, including inaudible elements like rain, electric signals through the roof, and vibrations from Poznansky’s violin compositions. Reverberations from corrugated steel sheets (acid etchings) further amplify the sensory experience. "The shed itself becomes a protagonist," Poznansky notes, linking her myopic return to the calendar and its original garage setting to the repetition and spatial depth of memory, transforming the shed into a space for reflection and storytelling. 

Adding to the immersive experience is the projected image of a green satin blind, referencing the curtain's symbolic significance in art history. While a nearby painting directly engages with Ingres' The Princess de Broglie (1853), a portrait of the artist’s wife he kept behind a curtain after her death. In Poznansky’s interpretation, the motif serves as a contemporary metaphor – both concealing and revealing – bringing us back to the exhibition’s wider themes of selfhood and transformation. 

Harriet Poznansky (b. 1990, UK) is an international artist based in London. She graduated from the Slade School of Fine Art in 2014, and subsequently lived in the San Francisco Bay Area (2014–2019), shaping her perspectives on the body, technology and environment. She has exhibited widely in recent years, including at Saatchi Gallery (London); Alice Black Gallery (London); WAY OUT EAST (London); Holden Gallery (Manchester); Boekie Woekie (Amsterdam); Punt WG (Amsterdam), and SliceBerlin (Berlin), Root Division (San Francisco), Flight Deck (Oakland CA) and Greenlining (Oakland CA). She was partnered with the SFMOMA artist Gallery between 2018 – 2021 and her work is held in private collections across North America and Europe. Poznansky was artist-in- residence within the University of Exeter’s Environmental Intelligence department (2022–2024) and at Coleman Projects in the summer of 2024. 

Press

Harriet Poznansky: Pin Up press release
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