Artist: Mark Manders

London Mithraeum Bloomberg SPACE presents Room with All Existing Words, a new site-specific commission by Mark Manders.

London Mithraeum Bloomberg SPACE showcases a series of contemporary art commissions, responding to and bringing fresh perspective to the history of the site. Our current installation, Room with All Existing Words, is the work of Dutch artist Mark Manders.

For more than three decades, Manders has developed what he describes as a ‘self-portrait as a building’: a collection of sculptures, objects, and texts that form a cohesive yet imagined world reflecting his inner thinking. His work often appears suspended between states, resembling both unearthed relics and pieces left abruptly, unfinished in an artist’s studio.

Installed above the ancient Temple of Mithras and beside a display of over 600 Roman artefacts uncovered during excavations for Bloomberg’s European headquarters, Manders presents Room with All Existing Words as a space poised between past and present.

A large sculpture comprised of different elements, including the form of a human head, adds to the sense of having stumbled upon artefacts or objects recently left behind. Alongside the sculpture, Manders has created a ‘newspaper’ containing every word in the English language, arranged at random, and a postcard that offers no clues to its content or imagery. Together, these works reflect Manders’ interest in language and form as fragments - materials that imply meaning but resist interpretation - leaving the installation untethered from any specific time or place.

In dialogue with a site layered with history, Room with All Existing Words invites visitors to consider how our understanding of the past is shaped from the fragments and artefacts that survive, revealing what is preserved, what is lost, and what remains unresolved.