Mark Manders

At the heart of Mark Manders’ oeuvre is the idea of the “self-portrait as a building”: an imaginary architecture in which each sculpture functions as a room, object or fragment within a larger mental world. Ongoing since 1986, this project constructs not a conventional likeness, but an indirect portrait through arrangements of figures, materials and spaces. The unfinished head has thereby become one of Manders’ most recognisable motifs. In Head with White String, calm, classically modelled features emerge from an irregular mass of seemingly unfired clay. A taut white string bisects the form, recalling the studio tools used to slice clay, fix proportions and plot contours.

This impression of fragility is deceptive. The sculpture is cast in bronze and painted to look like clay, creating a deliberate tension between temporary and permanent material realities. The face seems suspended between completion and collapse, between figuration and abstraction. What appears spontaneous and vulnerable is, in fact, carefully constructed and enduring.

Presented in a glass vitrine, the head assumes the character of an archaeological specimen, a studio model or a preserved thought. The sober display contrasts with the intimacy and physicality of the face, distancing it from any specific time or place. In this state of arrested transformation, Head with White String reflects Manders’ enduring interest in memory, construction and objects that seem frozen in time, as though they belong to an unfinished yet internally coherent world.

Painted bronze, stainless steel, glass

53.2 x 31 x 31 cm

Edition: 3/3 + 1 AP

Stamped and numbered on the base 

Copyright: Mark Manders

Provenance: donated by the artist and Xavier Hufkens, Brussels