Sebastian Bieniek - Facination No. 38 (unique)

Upon purchase, you will receive a certificate of authenticity issued in your name

----

THE ARTWORK:

FRAMED (in a solid wood frame and with a mat).

Size including frame: 26.5 x 20.5 x 2.7 cm.

For sale is a portrait photograph from 1947, overpainted by the artist Sebastian Bieniek in 2014.

This is a one-of-a-kind piece.

The work is part of Bieniek's “Facination Series,” which consists exclusively of overpainted paintings and overpainted photographs.

Hand-signed on the front and back. Titled and stamped on the back. The stamp and title also appear on the front of the mat.


----

ABOUT THE SERIES:

The “Facination” series by Berlin-based artist Sebastian Bieniek alludes to ideas of guardian angels and fate in connection with humanity’s tragic lot. It seeks to create a window between two worlds, such as “here and there” or “now and then,” and to bring them together in the form of a person.

For the artist, the “self” thus exists on two levels: a realistic one and a meta-level, linked to ideas of guardian angels and fate—and, more broadly, to the world itself.

The work thus takes up the ancient, universal concept of a world divided into two parts—as in the distinction between “ancestors and the living,” “humans and gods,” or even “software and hardware,” which ultimately amounts to a division between “idea and body” or “command and action.”

In his work, Bieniek seeks a visible form for both—and therefore for the whole.


---

THE ARTIST:

The artist Sebastian Bieniek was born in Poland in 1975. He studied art at HbK Braunschweig and UdK Berlin under Marina Abramovic, John M. Armleder, and Katharina Sieverding, and from 1998 to 2000 was among the members of Berlin’s “Kunsthaus Tacheles,” then known as the “artistic center of the city,” where he shared a studio with artist Chiharu Shiota.

During that period, Bieniek became known for his dramatic actions and conceptual art. He later studied film directing and made films. From 2008 onward, he returned to painting, and by 2013 at the latest he had become internationally renowned for his paintings and photographs with their ambiguous messages and imagery.

Since 2013, his works have gone viral worldwide several times, been shown on television and featured in the world’s largest and most important magazines, and achieved not only wide circulation and recognition but also reached the music and even fashion scenes.

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

After 2019, Bieniek created primarily social-media-critical and state-critical conceptual works, often framed within a humorous and ironic idea. In this way, he remained true to his long-standing subversive ethos and definition of art, and never allowed himself to be co-opted or used.