Mark Manders: Material as Language

by Samia Sultagi

“I don't often show my work in the public domain, rather in museums where people choose to go to see art. But since 1991 I always test a work that I've just finished in a supermarket. I just imagine a new work there and I check if it can survive where it doesn't have the label of an artwork. It is just a thing that someone placed in a supermarket. Now I am sure that all of my works can stand in that environment”. - Mark Manders

Manders, Mark. 2010-11. Mind Study. Wood, painted ceramic, painted canvas, iron. 170x240x500 cm. Zeno X Gallery and Tanya Bonakdar Gallery.

First Impression:

Manders, Mark. 2012-13. Working Table (detail). 

If the name Mark Manders is unfamiliar, then we're in the same boat. The artist came to my attention only two months ago at the Rietveld Pavilion in the Giardini of Venice. Walking into the exhibition I realized, if not confirmed, my ignorance in the contemporary Dutch art scene.  The space was packed with a picture happy frenzy audience snapping shots at every single angle of the visually aesthetic works. There is a je-ne-sais-quoi about his sculptures and installations that just make you want to join the crowd in the photo fashion. Before even reading titles and descriptions, Manders' work calls for a 'how pretty' response that a audience greatly appreciates. Then, of course, every viewer feels creative and inspired as the pictures look like artwork themselves- merit to the art maker, not the amateur photographer. They will be the new iphone wallpaper that can make one feel intellectually sophisticated; especially when bragging to friends about the art experience/ privilege. 

I generally find it hard to appreciate contemporary art because I feel my typical response is either 'I can do that', which totally demeans the artistic value, or 'huh?', when the intentions are blurred by insufficient iconography or meaning. In compensation to that scenario the works are accompanied by endlessly long descriptions that bore you after two lines, ending in bla bla bla that you cannot even remember. Manders is different to that situation. At the functional architectural space designed by Rietveld himself, the exhibited works require the reading last, as a confirmation or expansion on the enigmatic. His 23 years of fame are confirmed by curator Lorenzo Benedetti's selection of Manders out of the 82 proposals for the exhibition. He did good by his choice. The works have revived and reaffirmed contemporary Dutch art. 

Manders, Mark. 2013. Composition with Blue. Wood, painted wood, painted epoxy. 23 x 33,5 x 13,5 cm

The Analysis:

Manders, Mark. 2012-3. Head Studies. Zeo X Gallery and Tanya Bonakdar Gallery. 

Manders' coherent oeuvre is composed of installations and works in a type of monumental representation within 'a spatial and temporal dimension'. The sculptures speak a language hidden within the materiality. Human figures are combined with geometric shapes to create aesthetically visual representations that articulate separation and isolation as they are inserted within architectural forms, a type of cityscape of high-rise buildings. The identity of man in nature, the urban environment. The perfectly sculpted faces look like porcelain dolls of ideal beauty of a European stereotype. The body is detached by found materials, raw wood, bronze, and architectural pieces and secluded into its sliver of a space. Further examination of the materials, nothing appears as it is. Materials represent other materials: clay looks like bronze, bronze looks like wood, and epoxy looks like clay.

Manders, Mark. 2010. Composition with Short Verticles. Wood, 

painted wood, painted epoxy. 42 x 49 x 74.5. Private Collection, London.

The carefully constructed sculptural pieces compose a poetic language of identity. The city is made of forms with blurred characteristics that frame and build around the human body that struggles for a habitat within the structure. What initially appears beautiful and picturesque actually articulates a type of devastation. Manders in 1986 was quoted for saying he identifies his investigations as 'self portrait as building'. The layers speak of features within the human psyche. The nature of man is a complex stratum of diverse and intricate fusion of elements that communicate identity. Nothing is what is appears to be: the facade is deceiving.

Manders oeuvre is visually pleasing with a hidden complex content, a type of map of one's own identity, buried within the materials, the layers. No one is perfect, with features of ideal beauty, but split by an accumulation and depositing of substance and matter. Each individual is a unique sculpture of random collection. The micro depiction represents the macro of the community, city, culture and global world of universal portrayal of man's search for self. 

Working Table

Manders, Mark. 2012-13. Working Table. Epoxy, wood, canvas, iron, paper. 368x142x225. Zeno X Gallery

Of the works exhibited, the personally preferred sculpture would be Working Table for various intentions and motivations. Art may have a universal identity, or at least one that can articulate something to a viewer. Each with their own baggage creates an intended meaning through what is visually perceived. There is no doubt some understandings will be limited to 'how pretty' postcard send to grandma written 'Greetings from Venice'. 

The monumental Working Table is a larger than life sculpture where the sliced human head is wedged by an iron bands that hold the layers of wood, clay, epoxy, canvas and paper together. The piece sits on tables that look like they were temporarily 'borrowed' from a nearby school. The asymmetrical composition's imbalance looks like it is about to tilt over any second, hopefully while the photo-happy viewer is out of harms way. This sort of randomness of assembly is actually what makes the work appealing. The unplanned nature of man who consciously aims to free himself from within the isolated complex world of the daily in search, in struggle, for identity. Manders' materiality speaks a language; one of  a phenomenon that appears to be global as the transnational urbanization of cities consumes individuality for the sake of conformation. 

Mark Manders by Cedric Verhelst

Other works by Mark Manders:

Clay Figure with Iron Chair. 2009

 Drawing with Vanishing Point. 1998. 

Ramble Room Chair. 2010.

Room with Chairs and Factory. 2003-08

For more exhibition images: artsy.net/DutchPavilion

For a video of the exhibition: blip.tv/vernissagetv/mark-manders-at-venice-art-biennale-2013-6597927

For other images of Manders' art: www.markmanders.org

Bibliography

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