Mark Manders
Room with Broken Sentence
1 June–24 November 2013
Opening: 29 May, 11am
Giardini, Venice
Curator: Lorenzo Benedetti
Commissioner: Mondriaan Fund
Mark Manders (b. 1968) is representing the Netherlands at the 55th International Art Exhibition – la Biennale di Venezia. The Dutch pavilion showcases Room with Broken Sentence, curated by Lorenzo Benedetti (1972). The exhibition covers a 23-year span of Manders’ activity, combining existing installations with a spectacular four-meter-high monumental new work.
The larger installations developed specially for the Rietveld pavilion reveal significant new aspects of the artist’s formal and conceptual vocabulary. Turning his back on the frenetic consumerist dynamics of today’s cultural system, Manders withdraws into sculptures that seem to have always been there. All works combine a certain mystery with tremendous visual appeal. Manders’ use of materials, in which nothing is what it seems (epoxy looks like clay, clay becomes bronze and bronze seems to be wood), enhances this enigmatic visual impact. Leaving the shelter of the ‘white cube,’ it infiltrates, blends into and seeks acknowledgement within a reality close to that of the general public.
2013 is a special year for the Netherlands at the Venice Biennale, as it celebrates both a 100th and a 60th anniversary. The Netherlands may have been present since the start of the Biennale, but only from 1913 onwards in their own exhibition space and since 1953 in the present pavilion designed by the great Dutch architect Gerrit Rietveld. The selection of Mark Manders places him in direct confrontation with Rietveld, whose Modernist pavilion is one of the architectural jewels of the Giardini of the Biennale. The result will be a dialogue between two Dutchmen: a Modernist architect and an artist who, a child of his time, sets out to decipher the enigmatic temporal dimension of our age and create a parallel, autonomous one of his own.
Manders launched his career in 1986 with a work titled Self-Portrait as a Building: a floor plan of a building realised with pencils, pens and other writing implements. From this point onwards his art has revolved around the exploration of this inner building. He has had solo exhibitions at the Art Institute Chicago and the Renaissance Society in Chicago, Berkeley Art Museum, the Irish Museum of Modern Art in Dublin, Carillo Gil Museum of Art in Mexico City, and in Musée Carré d’Art in Nîmes amongst others. In 2010 Manders’ first American exhibition tour started in the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles and travelled to the Aspen Museum of Art, the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis and the Dallas Museum of Art.
Lorenzo Benedetti, since 2008 director of the Art Center De Vleeshal at Middelburg, The Netherlands, is internationally recognized for his inspired presentations. He studied Art history at La Sapienza in Rome and attended the Curatorial Training Program at de Appel arts centre in Amsterdam. He was curator in Marta Herford under the direction of Jan Hoet, and guest curator at La Kunsthalle Mulhouse. He is tutor at the Jan van Eyck Academy in Maastricht and writes regularly for exhibition catalogues and art magazines.
Publication
Titled Room with Broken Sentence, a fully illustrated catalogue will accompany the exhibition. This publication will have an unique character, the large number of contributions creating an interesting multiple perspective on the work of Manders. The authors are: Maxwell L. Anderson / Maria Barnas / Stephan Berg / Achim Borchardt-Hume / Saskia Bos / Philippe Van Cauteren / Doryun Chong / Penelope Curtis / Birgit Donker / Nickel van Duijvenboden / Peter Eleey / Douglas Fogle / Gary Garrels / Jeffrey Grove / Hans den Hartog Jager / Jan Hoet / Laura Hoptman / Wonne Ickx / Toby Kamps / Yukie Kamiya / Mami Kataoka / Vincenzo Latronico / Maaike Lauwaert / Jean-Hubert Martin / François Piron / Philippe Pirotte / Yasmil Raymond / Hans Rudolf Reust / Lon Robbé / Dieter Roelstraete / Ralph Rugoff / Nancy Spector / Susan Lubowsky Talbott / Mirjam Varadinis / Olga Viso / Joel Wachs / Ida van Zijl / Heidi Zuckerman Jacobson, each reflecting on an individual piece. The catalogue will be published by Roma Publications, Amsterdam.
Mondriaan Fund
The Mondriaan Fund has been responsible for the Dutch presence at the Venice Biennale since 1995. This year the entry was determined through a juried open call; 82 proposals were submitted from which the Manders & Benedetti plan was selected.
For further information and images:
International press contact
RP PR, Rhiannon Pickles
T 31 (0)615821202 / info [at] picklespr.com
Contact Dutch press
Mondriaan Fund, Caroline Soons
T 31 (0)20 523 15 23
For images please visit www.venicebiennale.nl, where images can be downloaded with additional texts.