calendario eventi  :: 

X

15/10/2008

Melvin Moti

MMK - Museum fur Moderne Kunst, Frankfurt

"And I saw light in the form of a river blazing with radiance." This is Dante's description of what he perceived as he entered the tenth circle of heaven in paradise. Throughout history, light phenomena have been interpreted as religious visions. What for some is a spiritual accomplishment following hours of seclusion, is explained by others as a physiological reaction following a period of reduced stimulation of the sense of sight. 'Prisoner's cinema' is the term used to refer to the varicoloured play of light which prison inmates – but also pilots and long-distance truck drivers – have reported on. They see it when they gaze into a visually unmodulated and virtually unchanging environment for long stretches at a time. What they are actually experiencing is a phenomenon determined not by the outside world, but by the brain. This is how the brain reacts to an 'undersupply' of visual stimulae. 'Prisoner's cinema' is also presumed to be a scientific explanation for ap paritions.

Melvin Moti's 35mm film The Prisoner's Cinema (2008) forms the core of the solo exhibition When No Means On, which – on view at the MMK Zollamt until 18 January 2009 – presents a number of works never yet shown in Germany. Film is Moti's primary medium. Recently, however, he has begun showing his films in conjunction with works in other media. When No Means On continues this approach. Apart from two films, the exhibition includes photographs, a drawing, a text-based work and an installation in the public realm.

When No Means On is a reflection of Melvin Moti's interest in states of non-productivity. On various levels, the works are concerned with the reduction of visual information and the reactions to that reduction. The Prisoner's Cinema, for example, is far more than the illustration of a neurological phenomenon. As we watch the film, we begin to wonder how much of what we see is generated in our inner worlds, and how much outside of ourselves. Is it really all happening on the screen, or are we encountering the very phenomenon the film tells us about? No Show (2004) looks at the theme of vision and imagination from a different angle. Making reference to a historical event that took place at the Hermitage in St. Petersburg during World War II, the film revolves around an exhibition which only appears to the eye through a conscious act of imagination. Again and again, the historical emerges in entirely unexpected moments, like a ghost, in Melvin Moti's works. Within each of the subjects explored, imagination is stretched to the outer limits of human capacity and proposes a radical, yet playful, apprehension of a possible alternative.

Melvin Moti, born in Rotterdam in 1977, studied at the Academie Voor Beeldende Vorming in Tilburg from 1995 to 1999 and worked at De Ateliers in Amsterdam from 1999 to 2001, where he now teaches. In 2006 he received the Charlotte Köhler Prijs and the J.C. van Lanschot Prijs. His works have been shown at the Frac Champagne in Reims, the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam, the Kunstverein Köln and elsewhere. He recently participated in the 5th Berlin Biennale. He lives in Rotterdam.

Melvin Moti is the 2007 Karl-Ströher-Preis laureate.

Image: The Prisoner's Cinema, 2008. 35mm film with sound (film still)

Press and Public Relations
Dr. Andreas Bee (head)
Daniela Denninger (assistant)
Phone +49 69 21235844 Fax +49 69 21237882 daniela.denninger@stadt-frankfurt.de

Opening: Thursday, 16 October 2008, 7 pm

MMK Museum für Moderne Kunst
Frankfurt am Main
Domstrasse 10 - 60311 Frankfurt am Main
Opening hours
Tuesday to Sunday 10 a.m. – 8 p.m.
Admission until 7.30 p.m.
Mondayclosed
The Admission is free.

stampa

permanent link