Sebastian Bieniek - Facination No. 32

With the purchase you receive a certificate of authenticity issued in your name

----
THE ARTWORK:

For sale is a portrait photo repainted by the artist in 2014, which is part of his "Facination Series", consisting solely of repainted paintings and repainted photos.

The original photo is an original photograph from the year 1920.

Front and back hand-signed. Back titled and stamped. Stamp and title also on the front of the matting.

FRAMED (in a natural wood frame and in the matting):

Size including frame: 26.5 x 20.5 x 2.7 cm.


----
ABOUT THE SERIES:

The series “Facination” by the Berlin-based artist Sebastian Bieniek plays with notions of guardian angels and fate in connection with the tragically fallen lot of humans and aims to create a window between two worlds such as "here and there" or "now and then" and to build a unity in the form of a person from it.

Thus the “self” exists for the artist on two levels: a realistic one and a meta level that is linked to ideas of guardian angels and fate — and in a broader sense to the world itself.

The work thus engages with the ancient universal concept of a world split into two parts – for example in the distinction between “ancestors and the living,” “humans and gods,” or even “software and hardware,” which ultimately is nothing more than a separation into “idea and body” or “command and action.”

Bieniek seeks in his work a visible form for both – and thus for the whole.


---
THE ARTIST:

The artist Sebastian Bieniek was born in 1975 in Poland. He studied art at the HBK Braunschweig and the UdK Berlin with Marina Abramović, John M. Armleder, and Katharina Sieverding and was a member from 1998–2000 of the then-known as the city’s artistic center, the Kunsthaus Tacheles in Berlin, where he shared a studio with the artist Chiharu Shiota.

During that time Bieniek became known for his drastic actions and conceptual art. He later studied film directing and made films. From 2008 he painted again, and by 2013 at the latest he became world-famous for his paintings and photos with ambivalent statements and representations.

From 2013 his works repeatedly went viral worldwide, were shown on television and published in the world's largest and most important magazines, and achieved not only wide distribution and recognition but also influence in the music and even fashion scenes.

For example, in 2014 the American musician Pharrell Williams repeatedly displayed a work by Bieniek in his hit video "Marylin Monroe," and even the singer Madonna contacted Bieniek in 2016 (Vogue Spain article) and asked him to design the cover for her "X-Album." In 2015 the French designer Simon Porte Jacquemus had his models walk the Paris Fashion Week show with a face personally painted by Bieniek, winning the prestigious LVMH Special Jury Prize. In 2015 Sebastian Bieniek was named by The Culture Trip Magazine as one of the "Top 5 Influential Contemporary Berlin-Based Artists."

After 2019 Bieniek created mostly social media- and state-critical conceptual works that were often embedded in humorous and ironic ideas. In this way he remained faithful to his subversive creed and definition of art and allowed himself to neither be absorbed nor exploited.