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Checklist to the exhibition:Mark Manders: Parallel Occurrences /Documented Assignments

Hammer Museum, Los AngelesSeptember 25, 2010–January 2, 2011Aspen Art Museum, AspenFebruary 1–May 8, 2011The Walker Art Center, Minneapolis June 9 - September 11, 2011Dallas Museum of Art, Dallasend 2011– beginning 2012

Appendix to the book:Mark Manders: Slide Projections. Two Interconnected Houses /Documented AssignmentRoma Publication 146 ISBN 978-90-77459-51-5

Obtrusive Head (working title)2010 / Wood, painted epoxy, painted canvas, and iron / 29 x 37 x 79 (h) cm / /Courtesy of the artist; Tanya Bonakdar Gallery, New York; and Zeno X Gallery, Antwerp

I made this work early in 2010. It reallyshould have been made in the 1920s, but I simply was not alive at that time. It is a composition with verticals that form one harmonious musical chord, and it covers a small gap in art history.

Ramble Room Chair2010 / Wood, painted epoxy, offset print on paper, and chair / 65 x 180 x 85 (h) cm / Courtesy of the artist and Zeno X Gallery, Antwerp

All my works exist in one moment. If you zoom in on this particular work, you discover that the newspaper, which pro-tects the chair from the wet clay of the figure, is not an everyday newspaper. I couldn’t use a real newspaper since this fragment of my work would then be linked to a certain date and place in the world. All of my works appear as if they have just been made and were left behind by the person who made them. There is no difference between a work made twenty-four years ago or just a single day ago. Like the words in an encyclopedia, they are linked together in one big super-moment that is always attached to the here and now. The newspapers are made of all the existing words in the English language. Each word is used only once. The pho-tos in these newspapers are taken in my studio and are mostly of studio dust. I try to avoid including language in the pictures. The newspapers I make are the opposite of On Kawara’s date paint-ings or Kurt Schwitters’s collages.

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Short Sad Thoughts1990 / Brass, nails / 22 x 3 cm (x 2) / Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven

This work consists of two hanging wires that appear to be at the mercy of an enormous gravitational pull. In reality, it was with great effort that I bent the wires, an act that I then repeated in exactly the same manner. The title has receded into the material on two levels: a thought that lets itself be conducted upward from the lower left-hand side, around the nail and back down again,and the thought process of actually bending the metal. The doubling of a moment in time is the first attempt to accommodate the passage of time in the otherwise totally immobile Self-Portrait as a Building.

Anthropological Trophy2010 / Iron, brass, wood, painted epoxy, painted hair, and painted canvas / 430 x 268 x 263 (h) cm / Courtesy of the artist; Tanya Bonakdar Gallery, New York; and Zeno X Gallery, Antwerp

This cannibalistic work, presented in a catholic way, is inspired by a horrifying ancient Greek trophy tradition. After a fight was won, ancient Greek soldiers often made huge statues on the battle-field using shields, weapons, and some-times even dead soldiers’ body parts that were left lying in the fields. These piles formed huge warrior figures, later called tropaion, or trophies. In a can-nibalistic manner I created something new by using existing imagery from as many different cultures as possible. This imagery was not lying around on a battlefield; it was scattered around the human world.

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– (–/–/–)1994-2010 / Bronze, iron, and painted canvas / 335 x 210 x 49 cm / Courtesy of the artist; Tanya Bonakdar Gallery, New York; and Zeno X Gallery, Antwerp

Two animals and a machine together form one entity. The organizing prin-ciple in the machine part is based on the floor plan of Inhabited for a Survey, my very first floor plan for Self-Portrait as a Building.

Perspective Study2010 / Offset print on paper, pencil on paper, chicken wire, and wood / 53 x 90 x 7 cm / Courtesy of the artist; Tanya Bonakdar Gallery, New York; and Zeno X Gallery, Antwerp

Since the Renaissance, every artist should make at least one perspective study. This one is made with fake news-papers.

Still Life with Books, Table and Fake Newspaper2010 / Wood, painted epoxy, painted canvas, iron, and offset print on paper / 100 x 170 x 247 (h) cm / Courtesy of the artist; Tanya Bonakdar Gallery, New York; and Zeno X Gallery, Antwerp

If you are in a room with two books, a table, some clay, some pieces of wood, and a newspaper, this is one of the things you can make and place in front of you.

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Two Interconnected Houses2010 / Chair, 80 35mm slides / Dimensions variable / Courtesy of the artist; Tanya Bonakdar Gallery, New York; and Zeno X Gallery, Antwerp

These two houses are interconnected by two tunnels and now form one house. In one of the rooms I wrote my name on the wall, and I titled this draw-ing: “On the Various Contrivances by Which a Self-Portrait Is Fertilized by Its Owner.” This title is based on Charles Darwin’s 1862 book On the Various Contrivances by Which British and Foreign Orchids Are Fertilised by Insects, and On the Good Effects of Intercrossing.

Room with Chairs and Factory, 2002-2008 / Wood, iron, rubber, painted polyester, painted ceramic, painted canvas, unpainted canvas, painted wig, chair, and offset print on paper / 240 x 405 x 318 (h) + chair / The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Marguerite Stone Bequest and Gift of Mrs. Saidie A. May (both by exchange), 2010

As an artist you are not only talking to yourself. In making artworks, you are also talking to works by other art-ists. Good artworks freeze, and they all freeze around one single moment. There this work speaks to the silent paintings of de Chirico. I wanted to make de Chirico jealous with this room. I know that he has been dead now for more than thirty years, but for us that does not matter, and I don’t mean jeal-ous in a negative way but jealous in a more beautiful way, and in this good way I succeeded. This work is an image of the word factory that is taken from outside and placed inside a room. The organization of the interior of this living room factory is based on the very first floor plan of Self-Portrait as a Building from 1986. You can file both works under Bachelor Machines.

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Shadow Study2010 / Metal, porcelain, painted epoxy, and wood / 55 x 63 x 151 (h) cm / Courtesy of the artist; Tanya Bonakdar Gallery, New York; and Zeno X Gallery, Antwerp

If you think about the evolution of cups, it’s just a beautiful evolution. The first cups were human hands: folded togeth-er, they took the water out of the river. The next cups were made from things like hollowed pieces of wood or folded leaves, and so on. The last beautiful moment in the history of the cup was when it got a handle. After that, nothing really interesting happened with cups, just small variations, mainly ornamen-tal. Many generations worked on it, and now you can say that the cup is finished in terms of evolution. A few times a day there is a cup very close to my upper leg bone, and I slowly discovered that if you turn an empty cup upside down there is a shadow falling out of the cup, falling upon my leg. I wanted to keep this shadow, have it and own it, so I turned it into an image.

Closet2010 / Iron and painted wood / 51 x 33 x 191 cm / Courtesy of the artist; Tanya Bonakdar Gallery, New York; and Zeno X Gallery, Antwerp

About every five years I try to finish a closet.

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Nocturnal Garden Scene2006 / Wood, glass, sand, and various materials / t220 x 130 x 160 (h) cm / Collection S.M.A.K., Stedelijk Museum voor Actuele Kunst, Ghent

Three different ideas come together in this work. It first began in about 1998 with a simple wish. I wanted to put down two objects—two cups, for instance—in exactly the same spot on a table. That is physically impossible of course, but the idea, the wish that I could put two objects in the same place, stayed on my mind. Another thing that has occupied my thoughts for some years now is the slack rope. At any moment there are slack ropes hanging in many parts of the world, and I think it is an incredibly lovely, melancholy phenomenon. The curve of a slack rope as it hangs is just beautiful. A few years ago I devised a plan to hang a slack rope in the most tense place in the world. The two ideas that I have just described came together when I decided to put a cat in the same place as a slack rope. The only way to accomplish this was by having the slack rope hang between the halves of the body of a cat that was divided in two. If I had cut the rope in half, it would not have been a slack rope any more, but a cat divided in two is still a cat. Then I tur ned this still life into a nocturnal garden scene, like a three-dimensional photograph. I like the way the darkness in this scene captures light. I do not see this as a violent scene. To me it has more to do with melan-choly and silence. The difference in tension between the three ropes in this night scene is very beautiful. One of the nice things about a sculpture is that you can look at it for just a few seconds and then carry it away in your mind, sometimes for the rest of your life, as a mental photograph.

Figure with Tree Piles of Sand, 2010 / Painted bronze, wood, iron, rope, sand, and leather / 335 x 116 112 (h) cm / Courtesy of the artist and Zeno X Gallery, Antwerp

When I made this fragile, altarlike work, I was thinking a lot about the Middle Ages in Europe and the start of Christian imagery. I wanted to make a balancing act that is both cruel and peaceful.

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Balancing Act1993-2003 / Bronze, painted wood, painted canvas, and rope / 46.5 x 38 x 39.5 cm / The Pinnell CollectionCollection Pinnell, Dallas

I’ve used the tail of a mouse to make a short vertical line in this small modern-ist composition.

Finished Sentence (August 2010), 2010 / Iron, painted wood, offset print on paper, tea bags / 245 x 140 x 99 (h) cm /Courtesy of the artist; Tanya Bonakdar Gallery, New York; and Zeno X Gallery, Antwerp

At a certain point I had an overwhelm-ing urge to say something beautiful. In a frenzy, I went to the supermarket and bought about ten packages of tea. Then I worked for a long time on an arrange-ment of tea bags, which finally seemed to say something. It most resembles a “wordless” word, but an emotion still speaks from it. I know beyond a doubt that this was absolutely the best pos-sible arrangement of five tea bags. I was struck by the way the tea bags were lying on the floor below me and trying to tell me something. Years later, this small work evolved into more complex works such as this “finished sentence.”

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– (–/–/–/–)2008 / Painted wood / 45 x 45 x 181,5 cm /Courtesy of the artist; Tanya Bonakdar Gallery, New York; and Zeno X Gallery, Antwerp

Four colors on top of one another now form one single volume.

Abandoned Room, Constructed to Provide Persistent Absence1992-2010 / Painted bronze, plastic sheet-ing, and iron / Installation size variable /Courtesy of the artist; Tanya Bonakdar Gallery, New York; and Zeno X Gallery, Antwerp

As an artist I am a time traveler, and I like to freeze as many thoughts as pos-sible together into one big now. I like to think, as an artist, that the history of mankind comes together in my head. My head is filled with words, human gestures, and objects. I decided to make a room with the word dog by starting simply with this word and trying to make and stylize this dog in a way that an imaginary culture might have 3,000 years ago. After that I made the same image that I created of the word dog two more times but on a different scale. Although it took me eighteen years to finish this work, it feels like it has just been made and left behind by the person who made it. It has now become a room that we can visit and we can look into our minds at what happens when we see this new image of the word dog.

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