Dutch artist Mark Manders (*1968) has been developing sculptural installations since the late eighties, displaying them as fragments of a self-portrait in the form of imaginary rooms. He has established himself as one of the most distinctive and independent artists on today’s international sculpture scene. Starting with the exemplary piece Self-Portrait as a Building, created in 1986, his entire oeuvre can be understood as a large-scale attempt to translate his own existence and development into wordless, associative memory spaces. Patterning the self as a building gives rise to an artistic practice that interprets sculpture as the physical materialization of abstract and very personal thoughts, feelings, and emotions. Chimneys, brick walls, oversized model rats, tables, chairs, newspapers, and a plethora of small, personal objects are grouped together like surreal three-dimensional images to form timeless “still lives with broken moments.”
Exhibition schedule : Kunstverein Hannover, Hanover, October 16–November 25, 2007 · Bergen Kunsthall, January 11–February 24, 2008 · S.M.A.K. Stedelijk Museum voor Actuele Kunst, Ghent, December 12, 2008–February 22, 2009 · Kunsthaus Zürich, Zurich, March 20–June 14, 2009
