The Absence of Mark Manders

Dutch artist Mark Manders, born in 1968, has been devising sculptural installations since the late 1980s and exhibiting them as a fragmented self-portrait in the form of imaginary rooms. A veteran of solo exhibitions at such respected American venues as The Drawing Center in New York, the Berkeley Art Museum and The Art Institute of Chicago, he has established himself as one of the most distinctive and independent artists on today’s international sculpture scene. Beginning with the exemplary piece “Self-Portrait as a Building,” created in 1986, Manders’ entire oeuvre can be understood as a large-scale attempt to translate his own existence and development into wordless, associative memory spaces. Chimneys, brick walls, oversized model rats, tables, chairs, newspapers and a plethora of small, personal objects are tweaked in scale and amassed as “still lives with broken moments.” This is the most significant appraisal of his work to date.