Mark Manders

Since 1986 Manders has been making Self-portrait as a building. The first of this series of fictional architectural plans was Inhabited for a Survey, (First Floor Plan from Self Portrait of a Building) (1986), where the plan is drawn on the floor of the gallery using pencils, crayons and other markers.

The fictional building represents a fictional artist, "Mark Manders", an alter-ego distinct from the artist Mark Manders. This fictitious character is described by the artist as a, "Neurotic, sensitive individual who can only exist in an artificial world." Each of his exhibitions includes an evolving floor plan of the self-portrait building along with various art works.

Manders uses this architecture to drive his work and allow it to make the decisions, calling it a "machine", but at the same time bringing objects to a standstill as he develops these memory spaces. Despite creating this fictional space, he insists on using "real objects" in the "real world" to make his sculptures.

I don't often show my work in the public domain, rather in museums where people choose to go to see art. But since 1991 I always test a work that I've just finished in a supermarket. I just imagine a new work there and I check if it can survive where it doesn't have the label of an artwork. It is just a thing that someone placed in a supermarket. Now I am sure that all of my works can stand in that environment." He often feels alien to the real world and its institutional art settings. He insists that his work stays the same throughout its exhibitions but gets re-contextualized each time it enters the "real world".