Mark Manders
dal 26/1/2006 al 22/4/2006
Segnalato da
26/1/2006
Mark Manders
Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art, Gateshead
Short Sad Thoughts. The artist's drawings, sculptures and installations offer a wordless story. He takes an everyday object and turns it into something compelling and, often, unfamiliar. His language consists of the arbitrary and the mundane; beds, blankets, tables, chairs, spoons, sponges, and effigies of dead animals. These items hold an aura as they are positioned within his temple-like structures.
Short Sad Thoughts
Dutch artist Mark Manders' first UK solo exhibition takes the form of an ambitious new commission for BALTIC. Short Sad Thoughts showcases work from Manders' ongoing exploration Self-Portrait as a Building. This series of work evolves with each new exhibition. It is a project the artist has been working on since he was 18 years old.
For this show Manders has produced a number of major works in a diverse range of media. The key works for the new commission are a series of sculptural landscapes and portraits including Field Fragment, Room with Nocturnal City Scene and Staged Android. They may be regarded as three-dimensional photographs - some of them cropped by glass and walls. In Self-Portrait as a Building the world's mobility is slowed down, like an instant photographic exposure - a place where the world's lack of transparency becomes manageable.
Manders' drawings, sculptures and installations offer a wordless story. He takes an everyday object and turns it into something compelling and, often, unfamiliar. His language consists of the arbitrary and the mundane; beds, blankets, tables, chairs, spoons, sponges, and effigies of dead animals. These items hold an aura as they are positioned within his temple-like structures.
Like life itself, Self-Portrait as a Building experiences change: it shrinks and expands, and rooms are added or left out. These changes are recorded in Provisional Floor-Plans, which serve as successive sketches of the layout of the building. The design for the exhibition consists of a labyrinth-like succession of rooms, erected out of lightweight building blocks. The position of the sculptures in relation to this temporary architecture is an essential part of the building.
Mark Manders was born in Volkel, The Netherlands and now lives and works in Arnhem, The Netherlands. Short Sad Thoughts can be seen in BALTIC's Level 3 Art Space from Friday 27 January - Sunday 23 April 2006
Exhibition supported by the Mondriaan Foundation
Mark Manders was born in Volkel, The Netherlands in 1968 and now lives and works in Arnhem, The Netherlands. He began exhibiting work in 1990 and has presented solo shows internationally, most recently at IMMA - Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin, Eire (2005) and Berkeley Art Museum, Berkeley, USA (2005). He has also taken part in group shows at Documenta 11, Kassel, Germany (2002), Manifesta 5, San Sebastian, Spain (2004) and MOCA, Los Angeles, USA (2005), amongst others.
Mark Manders has work in the collections of several international institutions including Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, USA; MOMA Museum of Modern Art, New York, USA and Die Pinakothek der Moderne, Munich, Germany.
In the near future he will show work at the 4th Berlin Biennial of Contemporary Art, Berlin, Germany; S.M.A.K., Stedelijk Museum voor Actuele Kunst, Ghent, Belgium; Kunsthaus Zurich, Switzerland; Kunstverein Hannover, Germany and The New Museum of Contemporary Art, New York, USA. The artist is represented by Zeno X Gallery, Antwerp, Belgium.
For full biographical information please visit: http://www.markmanders.org
Events
In Conversation - Mark Manders and Matthijs van Boxsel
Saturday 4 February, 14.30-15.30, FREE Level 4
Mark Manders and Matthij van Boxsel, Editor in Chief of The Encyclopedia of Stupidity (Reaktion Books) discuss the artists' new exhibition at BALTIC.
Opening: January 27
Baltic Centre
South Shore Road - Gateshead Gran Bretagna