Sebastian Bieniek - Doublefaced No. 22 (7/9)

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 by himself.

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For sale:

Original photography (high-quality fine art print) from the Doublefaced series (2013) by Sebastian Bieniek.

The first photo shows a crop (the face). The full photo can be seen in photos 3 and 4.

There are only 9 individually numbered and signed originals of this work (Doublefaced No. 22). Here is 7/9.

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

This work is being sold as the penultimate piece remaining directly from the artist.

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

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Details about the artwork:

LANDSCAPE FORMAT! TWICE AS BIG AS PORTRAIT

- Title: Doublefaced No. 22 (7/9)
- Year: 2013
- Size: 57.5 x 80.5 cm. (There is a 4 cm wide white border around the photo. The measurements include the white border)
- Condition: the artwork is a photograph (not mounted and not framed)
- Paper: Baryta Canson
- Creation method: C-Print
- Signed: front bottom signed, titled, dated and stamped

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Condition of the photograph:

Good condition.

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Shipping:

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 also reflects it in its purest form. In an era shaped by digital self-presentation, constant reinvention of the ego, and the fragmentation of one’s identity on social media, Bieniek’s works tapped into a nervous core of society. His works captured the deep human need to be simultaneously masked and visible in the digital noise, and made the duality of our modern existence visually tangible.

The minimalist yet deeply disturbing concept – second faces drawn on models’ cheeks 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 hit the pulse of the times is shown by its enormous resonance with globally renowned icons. Madonna, the Queen of Pop, was so fascinated by the hypnotic visual language that she chose a photograph from the series for the cover of her album Madame X. The concept also left deep traces in the 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. Designer Simon Porte Jacquemus recognized the zeitgeist potential of the works and, in direct collaboration with and with Sebastian Bieniek, brought the look to Paris Fashion Week. The Bieniek-inspired collection hit the fashion world like a bomb and helped Jacquemus win 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 demonstrated impressively how traditional art can push 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 (born 1975) is regarded as one of the most radical boundary-pushers in the contemporary art scene. His entire body of work has been a permanent, provocative dance on the razor-thin line between reality and illusion.

Born in Upper Silesia, Bieniek moved 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 extremely opposing influences: the world-renowned performance pioneer Marina Abramović and the Swiss conceptual artist John M. Armleder. Later he switched to the Berlin University of the Arts, where he completed his studies as a master student, while he also pursued directing studies 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 became a fixed figure. In 2013 he achieved international breakthrough with the viral Doublefaced photo series, after which renowned magazines crowned him one of the most influential artists in Berlin.

Early in his career, Bieniek stood out through actions that deeply unsettled the audience and the traditional art world. 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 document the impermanence physically. Alongside these painful processes, he staged disturbing social experiments in public spaces by laying 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 expanded these experiments into 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 apex of this interdisciplinary work was 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 news about his own death and accompanied it with conceptual video messages like his Apology for being dead, thereby sending the art world and the public into a state of shock. With this act he moved interdisciplinarily far beyond what any other artist had done before. He no longer used only 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 thus definitively proved that in the age of digital networks even the boundary between life and death is manipulable, shapeable, and ultimately part of a hyperreal staging.