Mark Manders, Study for Finished Sentence (2003-07). Pencil and ink-jet print on paper, 11 1/2 x 8 in.

December 2008 Field Guide

Anri Sala

Predrive: After Technology

Experimenta Folklore

Javier Ramirez Limon

Indian Art

Klara Liden

Andre Kertesz: On Reading

Ron Arad

Pipilotti Rist

Transpop: Korea Vietnam Remix

Looking In: Robert Frank's The Americans

Ree Morton

Emotional Drawing

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From Emily Dickinson to John Ruskin and Gaston Bachelard, writers have long compared the abstract self to the concrete structure or architecture of a house. One contemporary visual artist who has also engaged the metaphor is Mark Manders. Since 1986, the Dutch artist has been making object-strewn installations that have steadily evolved into a fictional self-portrait in the form of an imagined home. In Manders's "Self-Portrait as a Building," the "building" connotes a fictional architecture or "mental space" that contains poetic, autonomous objects that together draw a portrait of their maker, such as a bronze dog sprawled on a pile of drawings and a headless figure stretched out on a bed with a ballpoint pen aimed at an opening in its chest. From these poetic, self-reflexive works one can only conclude that while the man himself will not be present in the comprehensive survey "The Absence of Mark Manders," his presence will surely be felt throughout. "Mark Manders" originally appeared in the December 2008 / January 2009 issue of Modern Painters. For a complete list of articles from this issue available on ARTINFO, see Modern Painters' December 2008 / January 2009 Table of Contents.