Tanya Bonakdar Gallery
April 30–July 31, 2026
New York
One of the pleasures of considering ancient works of art is the continual reminder that regardless of culture, time period, or geographical location, people will always be people. There’s satisfaction in looking into the eye of a slightly smirking Grecian bust, the stoic, relief gaze of an Egyptian empress, or the impish grin of a Mesoamerican ceramic figure and apprehending a shared humanity. Likewise, what a thrill to inspect the Rosetta Stone, or the Egyptian Student’s Writing Board, and understand that language is, and always has been, communion.
Mark Manders’s sculptures, now on view at Tanya Bonakdar, evoke similar appreciation. Though all were completed within the last couple of years, there is an immutable quality to the works, a sense of timelessness that’s both primordial and farsighted. Manders employs a variety of mediums like bronze, resin, wood, and epoxy (to name just a few) to create objects that so closely resemble clay sculpture the viewer is tempted to place a hand on the material to confirm the eyes’ deceit. The monumental Bonewhite Clay Head with Vertical Cloud (2024–25), which anchors the main gallery, is paradigmatic. At nearly eight feet tall, it is composed of an oversized head with serene expression, its forehead resting against an imposing slab. The head, however, is not a solid object, but seemingly propped up by thick, boxy supports that jut from behind. Though frontally formidable, Bonewhite Clay Head reveals its vulnerability from this perspective. Its susceptibility is compounded by the crumbly nature of Manders’s material. The cracks and fissures of the painted resin appear to spread away from the facial features in mimicry of earthenware; in this way, the material possesses its own agency, projecting an illusion of temporal decay and physical transience that undercuts the actual structural permanence of the substance. Nearby, a somewhat smaller, though still substantial sculpture, Monument (2024–25) is similarly exposed. Unlike Bonewhite Clay Head, the head is unobstructed, allowing the viewer full visual access to its inscrutable expression. And again, the ostensible durability of the work is belied by the craggy, cracked backside that spills over into a pool of bulbous tumors at the neckline of the bust. The tenderness of the duality—both impressive and pregnable—has a timeworn veracity that reaches across generations.