Bitter Sweet Harmony

By Lars Koepsel for M+M

About the exhibition „Bitter Sweet Harmony“ of M+M: 

We feel very happy to announce, that within the framework of the artist and exhibition exchange program of Apartment der Kunst - apartment of art Munich and VTartsalon Taipei, we could arrange the first Solo exhibition of the Munich based artist duo M+M (Martin de Mattia, Marc Weis) in Taiwan.

The double-channel film-installations „Tuesday“ and „Friday“ are part of „7 Days“ a series of seven film installations. The production of the series began in 2009 and ended 2015. The films were created one after the other over a period of almost seven years.

All seven films of “7 Tage” has recently been shown at Casino – Forum d’art contemporain Luxembourg. Kevin Muhlen, Director of Casino writes: „Both installations handle with strong emotions like fear, hate, love, jealousy, longing. The visitors will repeatedly encounter the same protagonist, played by actor Christoph Luser, as he faces two apparently mundane yet utterly contradictory situations. His ambivalent character, melancholic or menacing by turns, takes on a different, surprising aspect in each of the dual-channel installations. The result is a cinematic kaleidoscope of heterogeneous personality traits, human interactions and highly charged situations."


Both film installations refer to key scenes from two different movies, from the horror film Tenebre by Dario Argento to the french film The hairdresser’s husband by Patrice Leconte.
M+M often greatly distance themselves from the original film scene, investing their narration with an autonomous interpretation. The simplicity and economy of dialogue and action could come across as banal, but not with the tension and potent significance of the scenes.

The second work group is called: “kurz vor fünf” (shortly before five)and “clips”, is an ongoing series since 2001. Each photograph in the series consists of 4290 successive individual frames of film. All the stories seen in these filmlet photographs take place on the same day and at the same hour: Shortly before five, Central European time. Here is a synchronized section of the lives of completely different individuals at the most diverse locales: Berlin, Bornholm, Montreal, Munich, Princeton, New York, Calcutta, Taipei ... The two large scale photographs of the series M+M show in Taipei have been filmed in the USA. In kurz vor fünf/L the visitor can follow a well known German actor (Armin Müller-Stahl) during his trip with a stretch limousine through Venice Beach, LA, California. The second photo shows a strange red haired girl, sitting on a bench in Chelsea, New York City, drinking and looking to a little canary bird which has been set free.

M+M are realizing a new work / photo movie of this series during their stay in Taipei to connect it with the narrative body of the other stories of the series.
  This work will be shown to public during M+M Solo exhibition 
at Apartment of Art in April 2016.

Lars Koepsel