Mark Manders, Pt III

III.


Perspective Study (2012-14), offset print and acrylic on paper, wood, chicken wire, 91.5 x 60 x 4 cm. Installation view at Gallery Koyanagi, Tokyo, 2015. All images: Photo Keizo Kioku, © Mark Manders / Courtesy Zeno X Gallery, Antwerp, and Gallery Koyanagi, Tokyo.

ART iT: The vanishing point is something you frequently use in your work, and yesterday while visiting the exhibition I noticed there is a point in the space here from which it is possible to see every work at once, through peripheral vision.

MM: Yes, it’s something I really like, and that’s the way the works are installed here. It’s almost done in a traditional way, but I like that everything is around you and comes together at this one point.

ART iT: Usually we think of the vanishing point as representing the horizon, but for you it’s also the subject?

MM: Yes. It’s where you are. It’s the same with the “Perspective Studies.” You see here the newspaper is curved at the back, not flat. The surface is almost like a film that hangs between us. I really like the fact that there is space behind it.


ART iT: In a similar way, it seems to me that you use the act of defacement to hint at the negative space of the figure, as when you jam a piece of wood into the face of a figure, or squeeze a partially completed face between objects.

MM: Yes. I like that these works require less space. I like the tension that it creates. It also connects to actions, making a hole and then cutting something out. Maybe it’s a bit strange to talk about, but the first time I made a head with these wooden things, I was thinking, if you take a few pieces of wood and put them on the table with a certain amount of clay, then how could you say as much as possible with only those materials? So I came up with the idea of a head stuck between vertical panels, and I only had to use a little bit of clay to make a sliver of face, and then it became this composition of verticals, and transformed into something that could be expressed as sound, like a chord with different tones. I think I’m more and more interested in how a form can be language – how a group of verticals can be like language.

ART iT: In Western languages, syntax is often a big part of appreciating the poetry, but with classical Chinese poetry, due to the nature of the written language, everything is much more compressed. When I think about the poetry of your work, I think of Chinese poetry pushing things together in a very concrete way, as opposed to an elaborately syntactical way. In fact, for me your works operate similarly to Chinese ideograms, which contain stories within their various components, but can also be read as discrete concepts as well.

MM: That’s interesting. Chinese poetry is something I want to look into, because I think it relates to my work. I totally understand what you say about ideograms. I remember, when I was around 19 or 20 years old, I had to ride the bus a long time and I was thinking about how I could make works that could be carried in your head. I think I have succeeded in that, because the works can become very compact.


Figure on Chair (2011-13), oil paint and acrylic on bronze, wood, offset print on paper, 70 x 165 x 70 cm, installation view, with Dry Clay Figure (2014) in background, at Gallery Koyanagi, Tokyo, 2015.

ART iT: Maybe this effect is also what allows the works to accommodate sudden shifts in scale. The figure propped on the chair is in a low, slanted position, so when you’re standing next to it and looking down you get the sense that it is small, but if you were to lie next to it, you would realize it’s actually quite large.

MM: It’s a curious effect, and very important when you make something – this way that the horizontality or verticality affects perception. As a sculptor using scale and horizontality, you can almost become a magician.

ART iT: Oppositional logic is an important part of the development of contemporary art, starting with the avant-garde in the early 20th century who pushed against the traditions of their time. Did you ever feel you were pushing against something in approaching your practice, or did you find a way to circumvent that oppositional logic?

MM: In my case, I think something magical just happened with this idea of the “Self-Portrait as a Building.” In the beginning I was afraid to tell people – including my parents – that I was an artist, because I thought it’s something you can’t become. It’s very strange to say you are an artist. I just saw a beautiful show at Palais de Tokyo, “At the Edge of the Worlds,” about people who are not artists but who make things that could be understood as art. It was a really interesting exhibition. For example, one of the participants is a Japanese scientist, Hiroshi Ishiguro, who makes lifelike anthropomorphic robots.

ART iT: Previously you’ve mentioned Donald Judd as an artist who has inspired you.

MM: But what’s interesting about Judd, and also Kosuth, is that their work is not an ending point. It’s fantastic that they made it the way they did, and it’s a ground for thinking further. I think it’s interesting to try to make something that is impersonal, something distant and yet close at the same time, but it’s also impossible to make something completely impersonal, because there is always somebody making the decisions. In that sense, my work appears to be very personal, but I’m dealing with the same problems Judd and Kosuth were.

ART iT: You say that the ideal place for showing these works is the “Self-Portrait as a Building.” How do you deal with showing them in a gallery or museum?

MM: The works exist in both places at the same time. I can also put them in a place like a train station or a shop. That’s something that fascinates me – that these works become so compact that you can place them anywhere in the world and they still function.


ART iT: The work in this glass case, with the clay head resting on the fragment of parquet floor – which looks almost like a shipping pallet – suggests a cross-section of reality or a three-dimensional photograph, but it also evokes the idea of the container, whether it’s a literal display case or the idea of a museum or a shipping container. Even as the glass case suggests something that is removed from time, there is also something transitory, moving across the sea from one position to another, which is built into its construction.

MM: But it’s like you really see an action here. Somebody made this thing, and put this head there and attached it to the floor with wires. And somebody put this yellow thing inside the head, and for me it’s irritating that the yellow is not straight, but I really like that it’s tilted. And I really like that it’s so peaceful, although there is also a lot of tension or even violence in it as well. And yet, with the vertical yellow line, it also becomes very formal.

ART iT: Why does the work have to be in a glass case?

MM: Otherwise it wouldn’t stop you. The glass makes it look much more fragile than it is, even though it’s bronze and if you want you could stand on it and nothing would happen – it’s super strong. So it is because of the glass that it becomes very fragile.

ART iT: I think the idea of scale and reduction is related to movement. Making sculptural works at a reduced 88 percent scale puts the work in a dynamic relationship with the viewer. It creates a dynamic separation between the viewer and the object. How does scale operate for you? Is it about seeing things more clearly?

MM: Yes, but it’s also different. For documenta 11, I made a big installation at 88 percent scale. I knew there were going to be a lot of documentaries and photographs of real events in the exhibition, and I thought it would be interesting to respond to that. I wanted to make a reproduction of something that exists somewhere else, so I decided to make a series of different rooms at 88 percent, so that the rooms would not be real rooms but reproductions of rooms. And also, because they are smaller, you can see them more as mental images, and you feel how it is to be a little bit taller. Physically, it’s very interesting to stand before things that are reduced to 88 percent. It’s very subtle because you are just a little bit taller, and you become something more than a person.


Installation view of solo exhibition by Mark Manders at Gallery Koyanagi, Tokyo, 2015.

ART iT: On the other hand, through your publishing house, Roma Publications, you have made newspaper projects which are printed at 100,000 or 150,000 copies, as well as publications like 32544 Assoziative Worktörper, a 108-volume publication that includes all the words in the German language grouped in associative units of five words per page. Obviously, they are entirely different media, but do you see a relation between the idea of scale in sculpture and mass-production in print?

MM: With the newspaper, I went to a town as a person who saw only fives, so I saw the town very differently from the people who lived there, and my goal was to make a newspaper with nothing but fives. But when you make a newspaper it should be a big edition, and it was really interesting to spread it from house to house so that every citizen got a copy. It was like a public work. That was a small city. It would be fantastic to make a newspaper in a big city. It’s interesting because the newspaper functions in my work but it also functions in the world at the same time. For me, the newspaper is also a sculpture. It is an object, the same thing as a chair: it is a thing made by humans.

Pt I | II

Mark Manders: Nought but the Leg

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