Three Related Works

Modern Art is pleased to present Mark Manders’ first solo exhibition with the gallery since announcing his representation. His sculptural works frequently portray anonymous figures, cast in bronze, though with the outward appearance and texture of dried or wet clay. One such example is a bronze edition of Ramble Room Chair, 2010-2025, installed in the ground-floor gallery. The sculpture comprises a clay-like figure resting on a domestic chair. Possessing no arms or lower torso—a wooden plank holds the body like proxy legs—the sculpture seems vulnerable and dependent, yet at the same time peaceful, serene and totally at ease. Upon closer...

Portrait of Mark Manders, 2024. Photo: Simon Bultynck

Mark Manders (b.1968, Volkel, the Netherlands) currently lives and works in Ronse, Belgium. Manders’ practice, from its outset, has centred around the idea of a continuously evolving self-portrait and his proposition of a ‘self portrait as a building’. The different iterations of this conceptual blueprint mostly take the form of sculpture in bronze and wood, while also encompa...

Mark Manders (b.1968, Volkel, the Netherlands) currently lives and works in Ronse, Belgium. Manders’ practice, from its outset, has centred around the idea of a continuously evolving self-portrait and his proposition of a ‘self portrait as a building’. The different iterations of this conceptual blueprint mostly take the form of sculpture in bronze and wood, while also encompassing installation, painting, drawing, writing, and publishing.

His sculptural works, often centrally focused on anonymous figures, tend to be made in bronze while having the appearance of crumbling clay. Frequently set in dialogue with domestic furniture, Manders distorts the scale of his sculptures – the furniture pieces for instance, are repeatedly scaled down to 88% of their true size – in a distortion of reality that reorganises the experience of his work into an unfamiliar formal and lyrical domain. Manders’ sculptures and installations, like words in a sentence, can be reordered infinitely, objects and forms creating new meaning and psychological interpretations each time, avoiding fixed interpretation while building a world of thoughtful propositions.