Mark Manders. Silent Studio
Opening: 31 October, h 6 pm

Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo presents Silent Studio, the first survey exhibition of Mark Manders in an Italian institution. The exhibition brings together new works alongside a wide selection of pieces created over more than thirty years, presented in an immersive environment designed specifically for the occasion.

Over the past decades, Manders has gained international recognition for his innovations in sculpture, characterized by an ongoing conceptual and material experimentation. At the core of his practice is the relationship between language, sculpture, and fiction, developed through the long-term project Self Portrait as a Building. Initiated in 1986, this project moves away from a literal and biographical approach to construct an expanded idea of self-portraiture and explore the narrative potential of sculpture. In this framework, Manders’ artworks correspond to “visual words,” while his exhibitions serve as the “rooms” of an imagined building—a constantly shifting reflection of the artist’s identity and narrative.

The subject of Silent Studio is Manders’ studio, a space both real and conceptual, that merges seamlessly with the minimalist architecture of the Fondazione. The exhibition features over twenty works, including sculptures, paintings, works on paper, installations, and furniture in bronze, steel, and iron. Despite their solid construction, Manders’ works convey a sense of transience and vulnerability, with their unfinished appearance and the use of enduring materials like bronze to simulate the fragility of clay.

Created over several years and, in some cases, decades, these sculptures feature an expanding and contracting sense of time, alluding to a timeless past and an ongoing present. The artist challenges the linear order of language to focus on the semantic plurality of sculpture, disconnected from chronology and thus open to interpretation. An ode to the fictional, Manders’ work invites viewers to engage with the material representation of the imaginary.

The exhibition celebrates the long-standing relationship between Mark Manders and the Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, beginning with the artist’s inclusion in Guarene Arte 97 with the work Fox / Mouse / Belt (1992), featured in the exhibition. Upon that occasion in 1997, the artist received the Premio Regione Piemonte for his project Self-Portrait as a Building.

MARK MANDERS (b.1968, Volkel, The Netherlands; lives and works in Ronse, Belgium) was the winner of the Philip Morris Art Prize (2002), as well as the prestigious Dr. A.H Heineken Prize for Art (2010). He was the subject of the retrospectives at The Absence of Mark Manders at Kunstverein Hannover; S.M.A.K., Ghent; Kunsthaus Zurich; and Bergen Kunsthall (2007–9) and Parallel Occurrences /Documented Assignments at the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; and the Dallas Museum of Art, Dallas (2010–12). Other significant solo exhibitions include presentations at Collezione Maramotti, Reggio Emilia (2014), Centro Galego de Arte Contemporanea, Santiago de Compostel (2014); Carré d’Art – Musée d’art contemporain, Nîmes (2012); Carrillo Gil Museum of Art, Mexico City (2011); and La Casa Luis Barragán, Mexico City (2011). In 2013, Mark Manders represented the Netherlands at the Venice Biennial; he was also included in the Ateliers de Rennes (2016), Athens Biennial (2007), Manifesta (2004) and the Venice Biennial (2001).The artist’s work has also been exhibited at the Guggenheim Museum, New York; MoMA, New York; Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh; ICA, Philadelphia; the Art Institute of Chicago; Louvre, Paris; Palais de Tokyo, Paris; Pinakothek der Modern, Munich; and Bonnefantenmuseum, Maastricht, among others. His work can be found in the permanent collections of The Art Institute of Chicago; Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh; MoMA, New York; MoCA, Los Angeles; Philadelphia Museum of Art; Guggenheim Museum, New York; Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; Pinakothek der Moderne, Munich; Kunsthaus Zürich, and Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, Turin, among many others.