On March 6, Public Art Fund will debut Tilted Head, a monumental new sculpture by Dutch artist Mark Manders commissioned for Doris C. Freedman Plaza at the southeast entrance to Central Park. Parkgoers will encounter a 13-foot-tall androgynous, detached human head in classical repose, seemingly made of drying moldable clay, but actually cast in bronze. The archetypally minimalist head is mysteriously incomplete, missing a third or more of its form, and is accompanied by remnants of cast bronze objects that appear left behind as if the sculpture was abandoned in the studio, frozen in time. With Tilted Head, tensions are evident throughout: the serenity of the face is countered by the disruption of the cracking surface, figurative representation veers towards abstraction of form. Timelessness and specificity meet, allowing viewers to project their own meaning and construct their own narratives about this colossal bodily fragment. Tilted Head is the artist’s largest single cast bronze sculpture to date and brings Manders’ highly distinctive style to an outdoor exhibition in New York for the first time. Mark Manders: Tilted Head will be on view March 6 – September 1, 2019 in Doris C. Freedman Plaza, Central Park.

“In a world where cultural fashions change at lightning speed and our collective desire for the latest trend dominates, the art of Mark Manders strikes a subtly resistant note. His vision is intensely personal, anchored in a conceptual framework that he has labored to construct throughout his career, to which every new piece contributes a key element. Both ageless and contemporary, both placid and violent, his work manages to hold contradictory impulses in suspension, offering us an arresting visual poetry.” Public Art Fund Director & Chief Curator Nicholas Baume

Tilted Head continues the artist’s longstanding tradition of manipulating material to create new form and highlights the contingency of materials themselves. To realize this work, Manders began with an intensive process of research and drawings; he then molded the work in clay and used an ancient lost-wax technique that dates back to 4500 – 3500 BCE to cast the entire work in bronze. A patina was then applied to the work to create the appearance of unfired clay – a trompe l’oeil effect that is a hallmark of many of his works. Additional details further the mysterious narrative already present in the work: beams of wood appear to bandage the diagonal slice of the head, while cast chairs and a closed suitcase seem to prop up the sculpture on its “unfinished” side, as if improvised or abandoned in the studio.

“All of my work is an ode to the fictional, My choice of materials stands in contrast to the illusion created by the finish of the sculpture – while bronze and wood are durable and permanent, the appearance of wet clay suggests temporality and transition. It is my hope that in creating an enigmatic narrative and by placing this seemingly unfinished sculpture at the southeast entrance to Central Park, viewers will question the nature of this work.” Mark Manders

ABOUT THE ARTIST

Mark Manders (b. 1968, Volkel, the Netherlands) lives and works in Ronse, Belgium. As one of the Netherlands’ most accomplished contemporary artists, Manders is well-known throughout Europe for his sculptural practice that balances ambiguous tensions and classical sensibilities. He attended the School of Graphic Design in Eindhoven and the Arnhem Academy of Art and Design. Solo exhibitions of his work have been presented at the Musée Carré d’Art, Nîmes, France (2012); Carillo Gil Museum of Art, Mexico City (2011); Berkeley Art Museum, California (2005); Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin (2005); Art Institute of Chicago and Renaissance Society, Chicago (2003); and Kröller-Müller Museum, Otterlo, the Netherlands (2002), among others. In 2010, Manders’ first American exhibition traveled from the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles to the Aspen Museum of Art, the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, and the Dallas Museum of Art. In 2013, he represented the Netherlands at the Venice Biennale.

The piece isn’t about any one person. It isn’t male or female. It’s just a head. Mark Manders, quoted by Paul Laster in Timeout Magazine

VISITING THE EXHIBITION

Named for the founder of Public Art Fund and New York City’s first Director of Cultural Affairs, Doris C. Freedman Plaza was home to one of the organization’s first exhibitions and has been the site of more than 60 installations since Public Art Fund’s founding in 1977.
Location: southeast entrance to Central Park at the corner of 60th Street and 5th Avenue
Dates: March 6 – September 1, 2019
Hours: dawn to dusk, daily
Subways: N, R, W to 5th Avenue; 4, 5, 6 to 59th Street/Lexington Avenue
Public Art Fund exhibitions are always free and open to the public.

SUPPORT

Leadership support of Tilted Head is provided by the Fuhrman Family Foundation; Marcia Dunn & Jonathan Sobel; the Dutch Culture USA program by the Consulate General of the Netherlands in New York; and the Mondriaan Fund, the public cultural funding organization focusing on visual arts and culture heritage.
Generous support is also provided by Tanya Bonakdar Gallery and Zeno X Gallery. Tilted Head has received funding through a grant from the Netherland-America Foundation. Additional support is provided by Ruth & Bil Ehrlich, Barbara & Aaron Levine, and Martin Z. Margulies.
Special thanks to the Office of the Mayor, Manhattan Borough President, NYC Parks, and Central Park Conservancy.
Public Art Fund is supported by the generosity of individuals, corporations, and private foundations including lead support from Bloomberg Philanthropies, along with major support from Booth Ferris Foundation, the Charina Endowment Fund, The Marc Haas Foundation, Hartfield Foundation, Stavros Niarchos Foundation, the Donald A. Pels Charitable Trust, and The Silverweed Foundation.
Public Art Fund exhibitions and programs are also supported in part with public funds from government agencies, including the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Andrew M. Cuomo and the New York State Legislature, and the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council.

ABOUT THE ARTIST

Mark Manders (b. 1968, Volkel, the Netherlands) lives and works in Ronse, Belgium. As one of the Netherlands’ most accomplished contemporary artists, Manders is well-known throughout Europe for his sculptural practice that balances ambiguous tensions and classical sensibilities. He attended the School of Graphic Design in Eindhoven and the Arnhem Academy of Art and Design. Solo exhibitions of his work have been presented at the Musée Carré d’Art, Nîmes, France (2012); Carillo Gil Museum of Art, Mexico City (2011); Berkeley Art Museum, California (2005); Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin (2005); Art Institute of Chicago and Renaissance Society, Chicago (2003); and Kröller-Müller Museum, Otterlo, the Netherlands (2002), among others. In 2010, Manders’ first American exhibition traveled from the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles to the Aspen Museum of Art, the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, and the Dallas Museum of Art. In 2013, he represented the Netherlands at the Venice Biennale.