Layers of Self

Acclaimed British artist and architect, Mark Dziewulski, reveals exhibits work from the Venice Biennale 2017 for the first time in London. British artist and architect Mark Dziewulski will showcase a provocative new series of paintings and sculptures at Gallery Different, London from 25th April - 1st May 2018. ​This work debuted at the Biennale di Venezia 2017, where he exhibited alongside Julian Schnabel, Jeff Koons and Yoko Ono. Dziewulski has received numerous accolades and awards, and he has been published more than a hundred fifty times in fourteen countries. For his public scultpture in Warsaw, the artist was honoured with the Gold Cross Order of Merit from the Polish Government, which was endorsed by Buckingham Palace.

While photographic portraits depict an instant, Dziewulski tests the limits of painting and sculpture to capture his subjects’ life-force, or their ever-changing motions and emotions. Dziewulski dances between the worlds of figurative representation and abstraction, searching for the elusive essence of his subjects. His “painted digitals” Yes I think we delete this part deconstruct visual references, testing just how far interference can go before complete while still maintaining recognition is lost.

In addition to paintings, the exhibition features Dziewulski’s latest sculptural series, Layers of Self, that launched at The Times Centre (The New York Times building) in Manhattan in late 2017. Layers of Self is made with multiple layers of transparent plexiglass, each a painted portrait. When seen while the viewer is walking around the work or from an angle, it creates the illusion of a three-dimensional bust. Thus the work manifests the nature of people’s characters, which we discover in layers that are built up to create a whole.

This fascination with movement and time has driven and informed all of Dziewulski’s work. Born in London, he received his MA from Cambridge University, and was a Fulbright scholar at Princeton. While running an architecture firm in London and San Francisco for the last 25 years, he has continued to actively engage in the world of fine art – using his painting and sculpture as a means of evolving and refining his architectural designs, and conversely imbuing his art with his own visceral architectural themes. Dziewulski is one of the few international artists invited to exhibit at both the Art and Architecture Biennales in Venice, and the Robb Report voted him one of the Top 30 Architects in the world.

From a sculpture for the Warsaw National War Memorial (for which the Republic of Poland presented him with the Gold Cross Order of Merit and which received a letter of approval from Buckingham Palace), to Asia’s largest indoor sculpture, Dancing Ribbons in Hong Kong, to a collaboration with Mikhail Baryshnikov on San Francisco’s Museum of Performance and Design – the theme of fluid forms constantly changing relative to the perception of the viewer continues to inform every aspect of Dziewulski’s oeuvre.

This Spring, the artist will also be featured at a solo show in New York City at WhiteBox (9th - 20th July) and by Gallery Palzo at Art Busan (19th - 22nd April), the largest nationwide art festival in Korea. Gallery Palzo will additionally represent Dziewulski's work in at the 17th edition of KIAF International Art Fair in Seoul, Korea (3rd - 7th October) and at Daegu Art Fair in Daegu, Korea (21st - 25th November). 

For press related enquiries, please contact: studio@MarkDdziewulski.com.