Von Lintel Gallery is pleased to announce DESPOTIKA, Fallen Dictators, the first gallery exhibition of Mark Mennin’s work in over twenty years and his first collaboration with the gallery since 1997.
Coinciding with the exhibition is the publication of a new 300-page monograph on Mennin’s monumental stone carvings in the landscape, published by SKIRA.
Mark Mennin first exhibited with Von Lintel more than thirty years ago, in the inaugural exhibition at the gallery’s Munich location, following years of friendship and collaboration with Von Lintel in Paris. This latest presentation marks a significant return to a longstanding artistic relationship. Best known for his large-scale sculptural projects integrated into architecture, landscape, and sculpture parks, Mennin has continued throughout his career to produce figurative works that inform the broader language of his practice. Trained in history at Princeton University and later serving as an adjunct professor of Art History at the New York Academy of Art, Mennin has long engaged historical forms and narratives as a lens through which to consider contemporary conditions.
DESPOTIKA—named after an historic Greek island—draws on themes of power, corruption, and political theater. Works such as Chicken Hawks present hybrid beasts with human heads emerging from the belly of a roasted bird, offering a pointed satire of cowardly leadership and conflict. White Collar Mischief depicts a series of headless Elizabethan ruffs resting on fluted columns, invoking a symbol of democracy later appropriated by royalty and autocratic power. The Congresswomen series references Aristophanes’ Assemblywomen (390 BC), in which women take control of the government to expose its failures. Other works, including Emperor’s Clothes and Pinocchii, continue these investigations into deception, vanity, and historical repetition.
Across the exhibition, Mennin’s technical virtuosity as a stone carver frames a body of work that is both formally rigorous and sharply ironic. DESPOTIKA, Fallen Dictators reflects on the persistence of historical cycles, the fragility of political systems, and the enduring relevance of allegory in sculpture.
For additional information or visual material please contact the gallery by email at
gallery@vonlintel.com.
