MMK - Museum für Moderne Kunst Frankfurt
DER BANDWURM
“I AM A PROBLEM” exhibition”
MMK - Museum für Moderne Kunst Frankfurt (Museum of Modern Art Frankfurt)
23 September 2017 — 18 February 2018
Selfie hype, veggie boom, plastic surgery, fitness mania – What’s our problem? In times of grotesque self-optimization and the ubiquitous pressure to achieve, the exhibition I AM A PROBLEM invites you on a journey through the ups and downs of human existence. Presented by theatre director and set designer Ersan Mondtag, the MMK 2 becomes sombre but nevertheless tantalizing parallel realm where works from the MMK collection become protagonists of a narrative and engage in dialogue.
For I AM A PROBLEM, Mondtag has transformed the MMK 2 into a scenic parcour. On its serpentine paths, we encounter border crossers and doubles, quiet rebels, failed existences, and bodies fallen prey to the will to optimize. The works range from Andy Warhol’s Kellogg’s Cornflakes Box and a large-scale commissioned piece by Plastique Fantastique to some of the MMK’s most recent acquisitions, for example Will Benedict’s music video I AM A PROBLEM, from which the show takes its title.
Plastique Fantastique realised DER BANDWURM (the tapeworm) especially for this show. It references the legend according to which opera singer Maria Callas supposedly swallowed a tapeworm as a way of losing weight. In worm-lake manner, the shiny black sculpture winds its way through the exhibition space, offering views of works in its interior and ultimately opening up as if to consume the visitors as well.