The Absence of Mark Manders, Bonnefanten

A catalogue of the extensive retrospective exhibition ‘The Absence of Mark Manders’ at the Bonnefanten Museum, Maastricht. The rooms in the exhibition can be regarded as the spaces of the artist’s ongoing work ‘Self-portrait as a building’. The works have been “left behind” by the artist in three different zones: the visitor enters a living room, then the museum, and finally the studio. According to Manders, all of these works are interchangeable and can be put into a different context, “like words in a sentence can also be used in different combinations”. A text by Douglas Fogle focuses on the role of language in Manders’s oeuvre.