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30/6/2015

Anna et Bernhard Blume

Centre Pompidou, Paris

Curated by: Clément Chéroux and Andreas Fischer

"Look out for the domestic objects!" Although dating from the 1930s, the Surrealist artist Claude Cahun's remark could have been designed for Anna and Bernhard Blume, so accurately does it describe the atmosphere of these moments of pure hallucination, quirkiness and uncontrolled deviation created through their images.

Since the end of the 1970s, the husband-and-wife German photographers (for whom the word "singular" is an understatement) have been staging a series of photographs where they are the principal protagonists, and in which everyday objects seem to be endowed with supernatural powers. A table begins to turn, the dresser falls over, plates start flying, a vase begins to levitate slowly, bodies start to contort. In the German photography scene of the last two decades of the 20th century, known for its decidedly objective aesthetic, conceptual and documentary – not to say cold – aesthetic, the Blumes positioned themselves against the flow. In contrast with most of their contemporaries, they have adopted an openly irrational, subjective and jubilatory approach. Their work is full of mocking humour. Through their pictures, Anna and Bernhard Blume express an insidious, gently subversive criticism of the German middle class with its codes, stereotypes, and relationship with consumerism and materialism. Levitations, the remote moving of objects and other spiritualist phenomena interest them precisely because they disturb the normality of everyday petit-bourgeois existence.

The Im Wahnzimmer series fully reflects this sense of domestic paranormality. Its title is a pun on the German words "Wohnzimmer" (dining room) and "Wahn" (madness, delirium). Produced in 1984, it is inspired by photographs of the paranormal phenomena – particularly those decidedly noisy spirits known as "poltergeists" – regularly reported in the German press at the time, on which the artists gathered a considerable amount of information. The exhibition is presenting the monumental, 25 metre-long version of the Im Wahnzimmer series for the first time. It consists of a polyptych of eighteen large format prints (200 x 126 cm), which entered the museum's collections in 2012. This first presentation dialogues in a new way with an exceptional group of photos of the paranormal phenomena that so fascinated the two artists.

"[…] if photography still ought to feature something essential, then in the same way, through an analogy with abstract painting and its categories, principles and creative entities, and through an analogy with transcendental painting, there also ought to be a 'transcendental photography'." Bernhard Blume.

Image: Anna et Bernhard Blume, Im Wahnzimmer (détail), 1984 Ensemble de 18 épreuves montées sur Forex © Centre Pompidou

Press contact:
Benoît Parayre tel +33 (0)1 44781287 mail benoit.parayre@centrepompidou.fr
Céline Janvier tel +33 (0)1 44784987 email celine.janvier@centrepompidou.fr

Opening: Wednesday 1 Jul 2015

Centre Pompidou
Place Georges Pompidou 01, Paris
11a.m. - 10p.m. ticket desks close at 8p.m. closed tuesdays

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