Mark Manders – Dutch Pavilion – Venice Biennale 2012

The Dutch pavilion at this years Venice Biennale is not one of the most welcoming, with all of the windows covered in fake newspapers, intending to separate the outside world from the inner workings of Mark Manders.

At a first glance Manders work seems to slot right into an established art context, referencing art history whilst maintaining a relevant and progressive approach. The relationship with art history and the history of sculpture seems to be an integral part of Manders work, the materials, the explicit executions and the use of the figure.

The press release provided informs us that instead of the materiality suggested Manders work is mostly constructed with epoxy or bronze rather that clay, throwing all of our initial presumptions into the wind.

Manders work is in a dialogue with the history of sculpture, appropriating notions of a somewhat classicist aesthetic in portrait works such as ‘Composition with Blue’ and his varies ‘Studies’ juxtaposed with more contemporary aesthetics such as the readymade.

There is a large sense of curiosity in Manders work. As the title of the show suggests ‘ Room with broken sentence’ Mander seems to be in a conversation with the world, questioning and trying to process it. In Fox/Mouse/Belt a fox lies on the ground with a mouse tied to its belly with a belt. The materiality is of wet clay but in actual fact is painted Bronze. Here Manders is freezing time, reducing movement to a single image that manages to evoke an alternate time ‘without a before or after’. The only moment that the sculpture seems to capture is that of the future, ‘the possibility that you could press your fingers into it at any time’, which is of course illusionistic.

There are three version simultaneously on show, most interestingly in a nearby supermarket in Via Garibaldi;

Manders work has grown organically from art history and manages to provide a new direction for its evolution, one that is both curious and exciting.