July 2016

M+M 7 Days

In an installation created especially for the Fürstensaal room of the Museum für Fotografie, the Munich-based artist-duo M+M are featuring a film cycle entitled 7 Days. The seven-part work is shown in its entirety, each part having been developed successively by M+M within a timeframe just short of seven years. The installation is akin to a multi-perspective cinema, in which the language of film expands to include the surrounding spatial structures and incorporate new narrative styles. Each film of the cycle tells its own story, though split in two and projected as separate, parallel variants. The protagonist – played by the actor Christoph Luser – finds himself subjected within the “seven days" to a variety of seemingly mundane, yet also entirely contradictory, situations. All seven films relate in some way to key scenes from different movies, in which the psychological dimension of interpersonal relationships plays a particularly significant role . By presenting them in dual format, M+M create new interpretations of the scenes while developing a cinematic language that explores the mutability of contemporary identity.

This approach characterizes M+M's re-imaginings of scenes from a number of films, including Jean-Luc Godard's Le Mépris (1963), John Badham's Saturday Night Fever (1977), and Stanley Kubrick's The Shining (1980), with each film dedicated to a particular day of the week. There are certain themes that crop up to some degree throughout the different films, such as the relationships between father, mother, and child, and the forces of erotic attraction (or alienation) between a man and a woman, or between men. Each film comprises a precisely synchronized dual projection, with identical dialogue, camera work, and editing, in the midst of which one character is replaced by another. Consequently dialogues and storylines are subject to change both in terms of their mood and meaning, be it on a subliminal level or more substantially, which in turn brings an unsettlingly diverse range of different facets to the fore. An integral aspect of7 Days is the arrangement of the projection screens in the room, the fragmentation of the homogeneous film space and its narrative structure into a multi-perspective cinema, from which an engaged observer is able to derive interconnections between the projections, multiple images, and stories. By exploring the possibilities and peculiarities of synchronized storytelling, a form with which the 7 Days film installation actively experiments, M+M give expression to their interest in the increasingly complex experiences of space, identity, and time, that have come to characterize our society.

M+M frequently combine different media in their conceptual-oriented work, from photography, video, and film, through sculpture, to architecture and projections in public spaces. Their activities have in recent years focused on multimedia installations.

Details

An exhibition of the Kunstbibliothek, Staatliche Mussen zu Berlin, in cooperation with Villa Aurora.

Waxworks

Every year, Villa Aurora awards a Berlin Fellowship to an artist from Los Angeles. We, once again, partnered up with Galerie Weiss Berlin, whose main focus is the presentation of current American art. Previous exhibition partners included the Zentrum für Kunst und Urbanistik ZK/U and Residenz Torstraße 111.

Rosha Yaghmai lives and works in Los Angeles. In 2007, she graduated from the California Institute of the Arts with a MFA and became a fellow at Terra Foundation in 2009. Her upcoming solo projects will take place at Weiss Berlin, at Kleopatra in New York among other venues. Furthermore she will contribute to the exhibition Knowledge at the Mount Wilson Observatory in Los Angeles. Her works have been exhibited in various show rooms, such as Public Fiction in Los Angeles, Commonwealth & Council in Los Angeles, GBK in Sydney, Kayne Griffin Corcoran and Thomas Solomon Gallery in Los Angeles, the Riverside Art Museum, LACE, LAX><ART, Estacion Tijuana, and Transmission Gallery in Glasgow.

4 Nights of Picnic & Silent Film with Live Organ

Saturday, July 16 @ 8:15 p.m.

Poor Little Rich Girl (1917, 64 min.) starring Mary Pickford in a film that her producers did not want to release but became a huge hit when Mary played a rambunctious, plucky girl for the first time.
Directed by Maurice Tourneur, adapted for the screen by Frances Marion and with oversized props by production designer Ben Carre, Poor Little Rich Girl was ground- breaking at the time.

Generously supported by

HEAT – A Summer Show

Following a series of successful exhibitions in 2013 and 2014 in Los Angeles, Gildas Coudrais presents works in his first solo show in Berlin. The “HEAT” is curated by art historian Katharina Schulenberg-Leduc and supported by Villa Aurora. The title both reflects Coudrais’ artistic modus operandi and shows his intention to debunk and caricature society’s superficiality. He pursues questions such as: “What is the relationship between content and appearance?” “What is the proportionality of word and image?” And: “In which way does the art embrace the viewer?

Curator: Katharina Schulenberg-Leduc
Supported by Villa Aurora
Opening: Thursday, July 28 6:00 p.m. to 9 p.m.