Sebastian Bieniek - Doublefaced No. 7 (1/9)

Sebastian Bieniek (born 1975 in Poland) is famous for works exploring duality and ambivalence, which went viral several times starting in 2013 and were published by the largest magazines around the world. According to Spanish VOGUE, even Madonna asked him in 2016 to create her new album cover, but the eccentric artist, as so often, refused and preferred to keep to himself.

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For sale:

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

Only 9 individually numbered and signed originals of this work (Doublefaced No. 7) exist. This is 1/9.

Most of the original works are held in important collections around the world, including 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 directly by the artist as the second-to-last remaining one.

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

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Artwork details:

LANDSCAPE FORMAT! TWICE AS LARGE AS THE PORTRAIT FORMAT

- Title: Doublefaced No. 7 (1/9)
- Year: 2013
- Size: 57.5 x 83 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 or framed).
- Paper: Canson baryta
- Production method: C-print
- Signed: Signed, titled, dated, and stamped at the bottom front

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Condition of the photograph:

Good condition.

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Shipping:

The photo will be shipped rolled up.

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About the Doublefaced series:

The Doublefaced photo series by Berlin-based artist Sebastian Bieniek is unquestionably considered 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 shaped by digital self-presentation, the constant reinvention of the ego, and the fragmentation of personal identity on social media, Bieniek’s works struck a nerve in society. His work captured the deep human need to be both masked and visible amid the digital noise, and made the duality of our modern existence visually tangible.

The minimalist yet deeply unsettling concept—second faces drawn on models’ cheeks with eyeliner and lipstick—went viral in the 2010s and had a lasting impact on global pop and fashion culture. The enormous reach of this artistic impulse, and how well it captured the spirit of the times, is reflected in its influence on world-famous icons. The “Queen of Pop,” Madonna, was so fascinated by its hypnotic visual language that she selected a photo from the series for the cover of her album Madame X. The concept also left a deep mark on music and pop culture: the iconic idea of the two-faced illusion was copied and presented to millions of viewers in the official music video for Pharrell Williams’ hit Marilyn Monroe.

The series’ most spectacular bridge between avant-garde body art and the world of high fashion was forged on the runways of the French capital. Fashion designer Simon Porte Jacquemus recognized the work’s potential to capture the zeitgeist and brought the look to Paris Fashion Week in direct collaboration with Sebastian Bieniek. The collection inspired by Bieniek’s art made a huge splash in the fashion world and helped Jacquemus win the prestigious LVMH Special Jury Prize, worth €150,000. Through this symbiosis of internet phenomenon, pop culture, and haute couture, the Doublefaced series demonstrated how traditional art can break free of the boundaries of the analog world and become the universal visual language of an entire generation.

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About the artist:

German conceptual artist, painter, and photographer Sebastian Bieniek (1975) is considered one of the most radical boundary-crossers in the contemporary art scene. His entire body of work was 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 repatriate and began his artistic journey at the Braunschweig University of Art. There he studied fine art under two radically contrasting influences: the world-renowned performance pioneer Marina Abramović and the Swiss conceptual artist John M. Armleder. He later transferred to the Berlin University of the Arts, where he completed his studies as a master student while also studying directing at the German Film and Television Academy Berlin. He began his career in the late 1990s at the legendary Berlin art center Tacheles, from where he quickly established himself as a major figure. In 2013, he achieved international success with the viral photo series Doublefaced, after which leading magazines named him one of Berlin’s most influential artists.

Early in his career, Bieniek drew attention with actions that deeply unsettled audiences and the traditional art world. Inspired by the physical endurance tests undertaken by his mentor Abramović, he used his own body as material and, in an early work, cut a new wound into his arm every day for several days to document transience physically. Alongside these painful processes, he staged unsettling social experiments in public spaces, laying out long stretches of barrier tape without permission to cordon off subway entrances or public squares in Berlin. In doing so, he demonstrated how blindly people obey visual and state authority. With his 2011 book Realfake, he extended these experiments into the digital realm: by creating dozens of fake profiles, he deliberately manipulated algorithms, the media, and public perception—long before the phenomenon of “alternative facts” reached world politics.

The absolute and most radical culmination of this interdisciplinary body of work was the staging of his own death as a final art performance. Bieniek, who had spent his life dissecting the mechanisms of media impact, digital identity, and deception, extended this principle to the ultimate boundary of human existence. He fabricated and orchestrated reports of his own death and accompanied them with conceptual video messages such as his Apology for being dead, plunging the art world and the public into shock. With this act, he went much further across disciplines than any artist before him. He no longer used only canvas, camera, or the living body; instead, he made total disappearance, playing with the afterlife, and the ensuing media hysteria into the artwork itself. Bieniek thus proved once and for all that in the age of digital networks, even the boundary between life and death can be manipulated and shaped, and ultimately become part of a hyperreal staging.