Painting by Sebastian Bieniek
NEWS 2024
2026/7 (No. 34 of all)
Media Democracy - Rendezvous of Truth!
Mediendemokratie - Rendezvous der Wahrheit
jan. 27th, 2026
"Media Democracy - Rendezvous of Truth", painting by Sebastian Bieniek, 1995. Oil on Canvas. 150 x 120 cm.
With his work “Media Democracy – Rendezvous of Truth”, Sebastian Bieniek creates a complex and provocative panorama that inevitably draws the viewer into the maelstrom of our contemporary media landscape.
The painting, which in its conceptual density is reminiscent of a kaleidoscopic collage, calls for a renewed reflection on how truth and power merge in the digital age, influencing, supporting, and nourishing each other.
In typical Bieniek fashion, the image is not a static representation, but a multifaceted exploration of the mechanisms of information dissemination. The central composition depicts a kind of rendezvous—a meeting—between different media forms and actors: social networks, news agencies, political icons, and faceless avatars. These figures appear to exist in a symbiotic, yet also parasitic, relationship to one another, and above all, in an inseparable dependency, like a body to its organs.
At the center of the painting is an oversized and dominant eye, reminiscent in its pictorial use of the Eye of Horus. This is embedded in a kind of screen supported by the lower body of an old man.
Branches sprout from this screen, and twigs grow from the branches, as if it were a tree. The unnaturally rounded shape of the branches makes them resemble a snake, around which people are depicted. People who look away, people who disappear, are distracted, or who are merely placeholders in a frame. The scene evokes the story of Paradise, the "Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil," and the serpent winding its branches. A naked woman lying on the ground bleeds, her blood nourishing a branch of the tree, while another takes the form of a phallus and approaches her from behind. Here, too, one might recognize motifs from one of the countless stories in which Jupiter, sometimes as a snake, sometimes as a bull (of Europa), approaches and impregnates her. In this painting, however, the impregnator is not a god, but the media machine, which spins on and on, always only around itself.
The color palette is deliberately reduced to strong and vibrant primary colors such as red, blue, yellow, green, and magenta, reflecting the exaggerated nature of the medium but also creating a certain artificiality and thus distance from the depicted figures. They are not people. They are puppets.
The use of separate colors in 20th-century printing techniques reinforces the impression of a filter that lies on the actual level of reality, thus preventing a view of it.
What makes this work particularly distinctive is the subtle irony with which Bieniek questions the illusion of transparency and authenticity in media-driven democracy. The "Rendezvous" appears as a meeting of masks—an allusion to the facade often maintained in the digital world. The painting invites the viewer to penetrate the surface and question the mechanisms that shape our perception.
Sebastian Bieniek succeeds here in a frightening way in bringing together the complexity of our information society in a single, powerful composition. “Media Democracy – Rendezvous of Truth” is not only an artistic call to vigilance, but also a mirror of our times, which, in its visual density, reveals an almost frightening truth: In media democracy, truth is no longer solid ground, but a fleeting place to be explored, and one that presupposes the explorer's own responsibility.
Text by Eugeniusz Stankiewicz, 2016 (read more.... / auf deutsch)
„Ghost Rider No. 59“ (Amy Winehouse, 2nd of 4 different unique versions) by Sebastian Bieniek, 2023. Acryl on board, 31 cm. x 31,5 cm. From the "Ghost Riders VI. 2023" series.
New paintings of Romy Schneider, Amy Winehouse and Lady Diana from the
Ghost Riders series by Sebastian Bieniek published.
The series based on the 27 club members now consists of 61 paintings and more are coming soon...
2024/5 (No. 32 of all)
august 30th, 2024
„Two-Faced No. 10“ by Sebastian Bieniek, 2018. Oil on canvas, 80 cm. x 60 cm., before also titeled "Frameface no. 1"
For a better overview since 2024 several series like the "Threeeye", "Facation", "Omniface", "Frameface" and other series working with theme of "Two-Faced" are integrated into the "Two-Faced" series, which is also the name of the oeuvre.
The numbering of the series is sometimes not chronological.
More paintings from the "111 Faces" series (no. 28-no. 36) of 111 potrait paintings was for the very first time on this website published!
The series was created during five years, from 2016 to 2021. All paintings have the same size of 30 cm. x 24 cm.
The paintings are mostly made gestural, which means that the painter painted what came into his mind without thinking about it until he found the face he was looking for.
„Face no. 31“, by Sebastian Bieniek (B1EN1EK), 2019. Oil on canvas. 30 x 24 cm. From the "Face 28-36" series of „111 Faces“ oeuvre.
PREMIERE AM 06.06.2024 (auf deutsch)!!! DZDSD - Die Zeichnung Die Sich Dreht von Sebastian Bieniek! Geplant ist ein ca. einstündiges gesprochenes Podcast, dass dann wöchentlich erscheint. Immer am Donnerstag.
2024/1 (No. 28 of all)
Claudio Parentela wrote about Sebastian Bieniek for iyezine.com
april 25th, 2024
Sebastian Bieniek (born 1975) is a German director, artist, playwright and writer, born in Czarnowasy (Poland) and then moved to Germany, where he still lives and works today.
I have always been intrigued & fascinated by the work of Sebastian Bieniek, intrigued by his curiosity in which I read and see my curiosity, restlessness, inability to remain with the same thought and always in continuous search, cloning, of other and distant mixtures and admixtures that smell of color and they dirty each other with different and similar means and ways and create changing and elusive identities, in a continuous change, evolution, return to one's own self which is the self made of deafening noise and introverted and autistically linear silence. Involution which is revolution of imagining oneself multiform and deformed.
Sebastian Bieniek's play with the images is to overturn the temporal dimension in a kaleidoscopic void in which each image renews and reinvents itself by tele-transporting itself into new and sparkling and desolate lives made of dust and stars of lights and red dots and very black. Infinite repetition and infinitely different and always the same in the thousand smiling and different feelings.
Almost as if it were a mortal embrace to be reborn as an animal and a dream, a bolt and a cell phone. In infinite streams, whispers, sounds near and far away.
It is the experience that is a jolt, an urgent and finely philosophical necessity, a feeling that hides and reveals itself in timid flashes and hides immediately after revealing its horrid and wonderful colorless gaze.
(Original in italian language)
Link (source)
Sebastian Bieniek, 2015