Sebastian Bieniek (1975) - Doublefaced No. 4

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 have been 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.

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For sale:

Original photography (high-quality Fine Art Print) from the Doublefaced series by Sebastian Bieniek.

There are only 9 individually numbered and signed originals of this work (No. 4).

7 of the originals are worldwide in major collections. These include the USA, Switzerland, Italy, the Netherlands, Austria, Germany, Spain, the Kingdom of Bahrain, the United Kingdom, Japan, and Hong Kong.

This work is being sold directly by the artist (as one of the second-to-last remaining).

The auction winner receives a certificate of authenticity issued in the artist’s name.

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Details about the artwork:

- Title: Doublefaced No. 4 (4/9)
- Year: 2013
- Size: 58 x 42 cm. (There is a 5 cm white border around the photo. The measurements include the white border)
- Material: The photo is mounted/glued onto a “Kapa Dibond panel”
- Paper: Baryta Canson
- Production method: C-Print
- Signed: Yes, at the bottom right front with a green pen. On the back of the Kapa board it is signed again, labeled, and provided with a miniaturized photo of the photograph.
- On the back also the artist’s card and handwritten notes in German by the artist. For example, that the photo was owned by Sheikh Rashid Al Khalifa of the Kingdom of Bahrain in 2016, who, however, swapped the photo for another one from the series because the motif (a smoking woman) did not fit the national culture.

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About the Doublefaced Series:

The Doublefaced photography series by Berlin-based artist Sebastian Bieniek is undisputedly regarded as 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 reflects it in its purest form. In an era defined by digital self-presentation, the constant reinvention of the ego, and the fragmentation of one’s identity on social media, Bieniek’s works hit a nervous nerve of society. His pieces captured the deep human need to be simultaneously masked and visible in the digital clamor, making the duality of our modern existence visually tangible.

The minimalist yet deeply disturbing concept – second faces drawn on models’ cheeks with eyeliner and lipstick – went viral in the 2010s and left a lasting imprint on global pop and fashion. The extent to which this artistic impulse struck a chord with the times is shown by its enormous influence on world-famous icons. Madonna, the “Queen of Pop,” was so fascinated by the hypnotic visual language that she selected a photograph from the series for the cover of her album Madame X. The concept also left a deep mark in music and pop culture: in Pharrell Williams’ official music video for Marilyn Monroe, the iconic idea of the two-faced illusion was replicated and presented to millions.

Most spectacularly bridging avant-garde body art and the high-fashion world, the series took to the runways of the French metropolis. Fashion designer Simon Porte Jacquemus recognized the zeitgeist potential of the works and brought the look to Paris Fashion Week in direct collaboration with Sebastian Bieniek. The Bieniek-inspired collection exploded in the fashion world, earning Jacquemus 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 convincingly demonstrated how traditional art can break the boundaries of the analog and become a universal visual language for an entire generation.

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About the artist:

The German conceptual artist, painter, and photographer Sebastian Bieniek (1975) is regarded as one of the most radical boundary-pushers in contemporary art. His entire body of work has been a constant, provocative dance on the razor-thin line between reality and illusion.

Born in Upper Silesia, Bieniek came to Germany in 1989 as a late resettler and began his artistic path at the Braunschweig University of Arts. There he studied Fine Arts under radically contrasting influences: the world-famous performance pioneer Marina Abramović and the Swiss conceptual artist John M. Armleder. Later he moved to the Berlin University of the Arts, where he completed his studies as a Meisterschüler, while simultaneously pursuing a directing degree at the German Film and Television Academy Berlin. His career began in the late 1990s at the legendary Berlin art house Tacheles, from which he quickly established himself as a fixture. In 2013 he achieved an international breakthrough with the viral Doublefaced photo series, after which renowned magazines crowned him as one of Berlin’s most influential artists.

Early in his career, Bieniek attracted attention with actions that deeply unsettled the audience and the traditional art world. Inspired by the physical boundary experiences of his mentor Abramović, he used his own body as material and carved a new wound on his arm daily for days in an early work to physically document impermanence. Alongside these painful processes, he staged provocative social experiments in public spaces, laying large sections of barrier tape without permission to seal off subway entrances or squares in Berlin. This demonstrated how blindly people obey visual and state authority. With his 2011 book Realfake, he broadened these experiments to the digital realm: by creating dozens of fake profiles, he deliberately manipulated algorithms, media, and public perception – long before the phenomenon of “Alternative Facts” reached world politics.

The absolute and radically extreme culmination of this interdisciplinary work was the staging of his own death as a final art performance. Bieniek, who had long dissected the mechanisms of media impact, digital identity, and deception, extended this principle to the ultimate boundary of human existence. He forged and orchestrated reports about his own demise, accompanied by conceptual video messages like his Apology for being dead, leaving the art world and the public in a state of shock. With this act he pushed interdisciplinarity much further than any other artist before him. He no longer relied solely on canvas, camera, or the living body, but elevated total disappearance, playing with the beyond, and the ensuing media hysteria to the actual artwork. Thus Bieniek proved once and for all that in the age of digital networks even the boundary between life and death is manipulable, formable, and ultimately part of a hyperreal staging.