MEDIA ART IN FOCUS – PART I

The new series is dedicated to the examination of media art holdings through thematic focal points. The first part deals with the manipulative power of moving images from film and television. The video installation RE-ENACTMENTS (2000) shows the artist Francis Alÿs buying a gun and walking with it through the streets of Mexico City until he is overpowered by the police. Shortly afterwards he repeats the process; now the police are in on it and the gun is a dummy. In her video work MATHILDE, MATHILDE... (2000), Mathilde ter Heijne also becomes the protagonist of her own experimental set-up. Referring to three French films in which the protagonist named Mathilde commits suicide, the artist recognisably integrates a special-effects dummy into the scenic sequence in a condensed re-enactment of the film plots. Alÿs and ter Heijne offer up screens on which questions around common patterns and clichés as well as the truth of media representations are projected.

Under the title Collection+, the Bayerische Staatsgemäldesammlungene (Bavarian State Painting Collections) in the Pinakothek der Moderne will be presenting studio exhibitions within the context of the collection. Presentations of new acquisitions, loans and artist rooms reveal the laborious work involved in gathering, maintaining and researching the collections, shining a light on the scholarly investigations into them and their contemporary relevance.