Sebastian Bieniek (1975) - Doublefaced No. 45 (3/9)

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 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 to 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 (Doublefaced No. 45). Here the 3/9

Most of the originals are now in important collections worldwide. Among them in the USA, Switzerland, Italy, the Netherlands, Austria, Germany, Spain, the Kingdom of Bahrain, the United Kingdom, Japan, and Hong Kong.

This work will be one of the few remaining pieces sold directly by the artist.

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

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Details about the artwork:

- Title: Doublefaced No. 45 (3/9)
- Year: 2014
- Size: 58 x 42 cm. (There is a 5 cm wide white border around the photo. The dimensions include the white border.)
- Medium: Photo (not mounted and not framed)
- Paper: Baryta Canson
- Creation method: C-Print
- Signed: Yes, multiple times. A quick signature is located at the top right front. At the bottom left, signed again, numbered and titled. At the bottom right is an artist’s stamp. On the back, signed and titled again.

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Condition:

Good.

On the back there is a spot covered with tape. This is the case with all photos that were exhibited as this one in 2016 at PUCE (Pontificia Universidad Católica del Ecuador) Quito/Ecuador, where Sebastian Bieniek held a teaching assignment. The tape covered the signature at the time, de-originalizing the photo so that after the exhibition it could be re-de-originalized (re-signed and re-labeled). The reason for this was that the artist was not sure the works would safely return from South America, and he did not want to risk the loss of “originals.” They did return safely.

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Shipping:

The photo will be shipped rolled.

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About the Doublefaced series:

The Doublefaced photography series by Berlin-based 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 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 works captured the deep human need to be both masked and visible in the digital noise, making 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 mark on the global pop and fashion world. How strongly this artistic impulse struck the pulse of the time is shown by its enormous resonance on world-famous icons. The “Queen of Pop” Madonna was so fascinated by the hypnotic visual language that she selected a photo from the series for the cover of her album Madame X. The concept also left deep marks 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 millions of viewers.

Perhaps the most spectacular bridge between avant-garde body art and the high-fashion world was forged on the runways of the French metropolis. Fashion designer Simon Porte Jacquemus recognized the zeitgeist potential of the works and, in direct collaboration with Sebastian Bieniek, brought the look to Paris Fashion Week. The Bieniek-inspired collection exploded into the fashion world and helped Jacquemus win the prestigious LVMH Special Jury Prize, endowed with €150,000. Through this symbiosis of Internet phenomenon, pop culture, and haute couture, the Doublefaced series convincingly demonstrated how traditional art can push beyond the boundaries of the analog to become the universal visual language of an entire generation.

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About the artist:

The German conceptual artist, painter, and photographer Sebastian Bieniek (born 1975) is regarded as one of the radical boundary-crossers of the contemporary art scene. His entire oeuvre has been a perpetual, 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 Art. There he studied Fine Art under the extreme opposing influences of the world-renowned 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 parallelly 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 where he quickly became a fixed figure. In 2013, with the viral photo series Doublefaced, he achieved international breakthrough, 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 establishment. Inspired by the bodily boundary experiences 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 physically document impermanence. Alongside these painful processes, he staged disturbing social experiments in public spaces by placing long stretches of barrier tape without permission to block subway entrances or squares in Berlin. This demonstrated how blindly people obey visual and state authority. With his 2011 book Realfake, he extended these experiments to the digital realm: 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 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 news about his own passing and accompanied it with conceptual video messages like his Apology for being dead, shocking the art world and the public. With this act, he moved far beyond what any other artist had done before him. He no longer used only canvas, camera, or the living body, but elevated total disappearance, play with the beyond, and the ensuing media hysteria to the actual artwork. Bieniek thereby proved once again that in the age of digital networks even the boundary between life and death is manipulable, shapable, and ultimately part of a hyperreal staging.