Sebastian Bieniek - Doublefaced No. 2 (5/9)

Sebastian Bieniek (born 1975 in Poland) is famous for works in the context of duality and ambivalence which have gone viral several times since 2013 and were published by the largest magazines around the world. According to Spanish VOGUE Magazine, even Madonna asked him in 2016 to make her new album cover, but the eccentric artist, as so often, refused and preferred to stay by himself. For sale: Original photograph (high-quality fine art print) from the Doublefaced series (2013) by Sebastian Bieniek. There are only 9 individually numbered and signed originals of this work (Doublefaced No. 2). Here is 5/9. Most originals are worldwide in important collections. Among them in the USA, Switzerland, Italy, the Netherlands, Austria, Germany, Spain, Bahrain Kingdom, United Kingdom, Japan and Hong Kong. This work is being sold as the penultimate remaining directly from the artist. The auction winner also receives a certificate of authenticity issued in the artist’s name. _____ Details of the artwork: - Title: Doublefaced No. 2 (5/9) - Year: 2013 - Size: 56 x 80.5 cm. (There is a 3 cm wide white border around the photo. The measurements include the white border) - Medium: the artwork is a photograph (not mounted and not framed) - Paper: Baryta Canson - Creation method: C-Print - Signed: bottom left with a red ballpoint pen, signed, titled, dated and stamped. _____ Condition of the photograph: good _____ Shipping: Photograph will be shipped rolled. About the Doublefaced Series: The Doublefaced photo series by Berlin artist Sebastian Bieniek is undisputedly one of the most important and influential photo series of the internet age. It is the perfect example of contemporary art that not only understands the modern zeitgeist but also reflects it in its purest form. In an era shaped by digital self-representation, constant reinvention of the ego, and the fragmentation of one’s own identity on social media, Bieniek’s works tapped into a nervous core of society. His works captured the deep human need to be both masked and visible in the digital noise, and made the duality of our modern existence visually tangible. The minimalist yet deeply disturbing concept – second faces drawn on the cheeks of models with eyeliner and lipstick – spread virally in the 2010s and left a lasting impact on global pop and fashion. How strongly this artistic impulse hit the pulse of the times is shown by its enormous resonance with world-famous icons. For instance, the Queen of Pop Madonna was so captivated by the hypnotic visual language that she chose a photograph from the series for the cover of her album Madame X. The concept also left deep traces in music and pop culture: in Pharrell Williams’ official music video for Marilyn Monroe, the iconic idea of the two-faced illusion was copied and presented to a millions-strong audience. Perhaps the most spectacular bridge between avant-garde body art and the high-fashion world occurred on the runways of the French metropolis. The fashion designer Simon Porte Jacquemus recognized the zeitgeist potential of the works and brought the look directly into Paris Fashion Week in collaboration with Sebastian Bieniek. The Bieniek-inspired collection took the fashion world by storm and helped Jacquemus win the prestigious LVMH Special Jury Prize, endowed with 150,000 euros. Through this symbiosis of internet phenomenon, pop culture, and haute couture, the Doublefaced series demonstrated impressively how traditional art can break the boundaries of the analog and become a universal visual language for an entire generation. _____ About the artist: The German conceptual artist, painter and photographer Sebastian Bieniek (born 1975) is regarded as one of the most radical boundary-crossers of the contemporary art scene. His entire body of work has been a permanent, provocative dance on the razor-thin line between reality and illusion. Born in Upper Silesia, Bieniek moved to Germany in 1989 as a late resettler and began his artistic path at the Braunschweig University of Art. There he studied Free Art under markedly opposing influences: the world-famous performance pioneer Marina Abramović and the Swiss conceptual artist John M. Armleder. Later he transferred to the Berlin University of the Arts, where he completed his studies as a master student, while simultaneously pursuing a directing course at the Deutsche Film- und Fernsehakademie Berlin. His career began in the late 1990s at the legendary Berlin art space Tacheles, from which he quickly developed into a fixed figure. In 2013 he achieved international breakthrough with the viral photo series Doublefaced, after which renowned magazines named him one of the most influential artists in Berlin. Early in his career Bieniek drew attention with actions that deeply unsettled the public and the traditional art world. Inspired by the bodily boundary-pushing of his mentor Abramović, he used his own body as material and, in an early work, cut a new wound into his arm daily for days to document physical impermanence. Beyond these painful processes, he staged disturbing social experiments in public spaces by placing long stretches of barrier tape without permission to barricade subway entrances or squares in Berlin. This demonstrated how blindly people obey visual and state authority. With his 2011 published book Realfake, he expanded these experiments to the digital space: by creating dozens of fake profiles, he manipulated algorithms, media, and public perception long before the phenomenon of “Alternative Facts” reached world politics. The absolute and radical culmination of this interdisciplinary body of work was the staging of his own death as a final art performance. Bieniek, who throughout his life dissected the mechanisms of media impact, digital identity, and deception, extended this principle to the ultimate boundary of human existence. He forged and orchestrated news about his own death, accompanied by conceptual video messages such as his Apology for being dead, thereby plunging the art world and the public into shock. With this act he crossed disciplinary boundaries far beyond any other artist before him. He no longer used just canvas, camera, or the living body, but raised total disappearance, play with the beyond, and the ensuing media hysteria to the central artwork. Bieniek thereby definitively proved that in the age of digital networks, the line between life and death is manipulable, shapeable, and ultimately part of a hyperreal staging.

Stima:€1,800

Vedi tutti gli oggetti diCatawikioFotografia