Sebastian Bieniek - Doublefaced No. 44 (1/9)

Sebastian Bieniek (born 1975 in Poland) is famous for works in the context of duality and ambivalence which have since 2013 gone viral several times and were 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 (2013) by Sebastian Bieniek.

There are only 9 individually numbered and signed originals of this work (Doublefaced No. 44). Here is 1/9.

Most originals are located worldwide in important collections. 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 is being sold as the penultimate remaining piece directly from the artist.

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

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Details of the artwork:

LANDSCAPE FORMAT! TWICE AS LARGE AS LANDSCAPE FORMAT

- Title: Doublefaced No. 44 (1/9)
- Year: 2013
- Size: 55.5 x 80.5 cm. (There is a 3 cm white border around the motif on the sheet. The measurements include the white border)
- Medium: the artwork is a photograph (not mounted and not framed)
- Paper: Baryta Canson
- Production method: C-Print
- Signed: bottom front signed, titled, dated and stamped

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Condition of the photograph: excellent.
The tape on the back (see photo No. 6) is normal for photos that were exhibited in Peru in 2016. It serves as an additional certificate of authenticity for these photos.

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Shipping:

The photo will be shipped rolled.

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About the Doublefaced series:

The Doublefaced photo series by the 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, constant reinventing of the ego, and the fragmentation of one’s identity on social media, Bieniek’s works captured a nervous core of society. His works captured the deep human need to be both masked and visible in the digital noise, and visually rendered the duality of our modern existence tangible.

The minimalist yet deeply disturbing concept – second faces drawn with eyeliner and lipstick on the cheeks of models – 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 times is shown by its enormous resonance with world-famous icons. For example, 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 traces 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 Paris. The fashion designer Simon Porte Jacquemus recognized the zeitgeist potential of the works and brought the look into direct collaboration with and by Sebastian Bieniek to Paris Fashion Week. The Bieniek-inspired collection hit the fashion world like a bomb and helped Jacquemus win the prestigious, 150,000-euro LVMH Special Jury Prize. Through this symbiosis of internet phenomenon, pop culture, and haute couture, the Doublefaced series demonstrated impressively 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-crossers of the contemporary art scene. His entire oeuvre has been a permanent, 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 Free Art under radically opposing influences: the world-famous performance pioneer Marina Abramović and the Swiss conceptual artist John M. Armleder. Later he transferred to the University of the Arts Berlin, where he completed his studies as a master student, while parallelly pursuing a directing study at the Deutsche Film- und Fernsehakademie Berlin. His career began in the late 1990s at the legendary Berlin art space Tacheles, from where he quickly emerged as a regular figure. In 2013 he achieved international breakthrough with the viral photo series Doublefaced, 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 body’s boundary experiences of his mentor Abramović, he used his own body as material and, in an early work, cut a new wound on his arm daily for days to document transience physically. Beyond these painful processes, he staged disturbing social experiments in public spaces, laying long stretches of barrier tape without permission to close 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 space: 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 radical peak of this interdisciplinary work formed in the staging of his own death as a final art performance. Bieniek, who throughout his life 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 passing and accompanied this with conceptual video messages such as his Apology for being dead, thereby stunning the art world and the public. With this act he pushed the limits much further than any other artist before him. He no longer used just canvas, camera, or the living body, but elevated total disappearance, the 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, shapeable, and ultimately part of a hyperreal staging.