Since the end of the 1980s Mark Manders (b. 1968, Volkel, the Netherlands) has created sculptural installations – or better said: installation sculpture – which can all be regarded as sections of a self portrait in the form of imaginary spaces. Through his recent participation in the 24th Sao Paulo Biennale (1998), the Venice Biennale (2001) and Documenta 11 in Kassel (2002) Manders has acquired a prominent and autonomous position in the international world of sculptural artists.
His career began as early as 1986, the year in which he created one of the key works in his body of work, 'Self Portrait as a building'. Everything Mark Manders subsequently produced can be interpreted within this idea of the self portrait as a building and as an attempt to translate his own human existence and biographical memories and feelings into wordless associative memory spaces or –installations. This concept of the 'self' as architecture, as a building, produced an art that sees sculpture as a spatial materialising of highly personal – sometimes abstract – thoughts, feelings and emotions. Of course Mark Manders is apprehensive about not allowing his poetic 'self' to fully coincide with the real, autobiographical Mark Manders, but at the same time the latter cannot be seen completely separately. Mark Manders' installations are always about a paradoxical balance: the construction of a self-portrait which can only reveal itself in a more universal visual idiom tha t transcends the hyper-personal and is characteristic of all good contemporary art.
Together the chimneys, brick walls, larger than life rats, chairs, newspapers and a collection of small personal objects form a sort of 'still lives with broken moments', an art that appears to distance itself from time. In his work Mark Manders seeks precisely that point at which the radical personal aspect of his sculptures, most of which are made by hand, comes fully to its own but at the same time – like a radical self-portrait – also acquires a more general character.
His career began as early as 1986, the year in which he created one of the key works in his body of work, 'Self Portrait as a building'. Everything Mark Manders subsequently produced can be interpreted within this idea of the self portrait as a building and as an attempt to translate his own human existence and biographical memories and feelings into wordless associative memory spaces or –installations. This concept of the 'self' as architecture, as a building, produced an art that sees sculpture as a spatial materialising of highly personal – sometimes abstract – thoughts, feelings and emotions. Of course Mark Manders is apprehensive about not allowing his poetic 'self' to fully coincide with the real, autobiographical Mark Manders, but at the same time the latter cannot be seen completely separately. Mark Manders' installations are always about a paradoxical balance: the construction of a self-portrait which can only reveal itself in a more universal visual idiom tha t transcends the hyper-personal and is characteristic of all good contemporary art.
Together the chimneys, brick walls, larger than life rats, chairs, newspapers and a collection of small personal objects form a sort of 'still lives with broken moments', an art that appears to distance itself from time. In his work Mark Manders seeks precisely that point at which the radical personal aspect of his sculptures, most of which are made by hand, comes fully to its own but at the same time – like a radical self-portrait – also acquires a more general character.
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