De haut en bas Sans titre (En regard), 1986-88. Polaroid-collage Sans titre (En regard), 1986-88. Polaroid-collage Sans titre (Photographie instantanée), 1975-76. Polaroid Sans titre (Naturellement), 1982-85. Polaroid Sans titre (Naturellement), 1982-85. Polaroid Sans titre (Le Principe de cruauté), 1989-2000. Polaroid

23 June - 29 August 2010 Since the 1970, Cologne-based artists Anna & Bernhard Blume have worked together on producing "photographic actions" resulting in photographs in which they appear themselves and pretend to document paranormal events occurring in the traditional interior of a middle-class German couple or in outside settings emblematic of Germanic art (such as the Black Forest). This work, familiar to the general public in France since the 1998 exhibition at the Centre National de la Photographie, mainly takes the form of large black and white prints in which the couple pose the problem of perception and the nature of truth, via a medium that is supposedly objective, namely photography. Burlesque scenes in which the artists are beset by flying objects involve an exploration of human nature and of our capacity for reasoned thought. The Polaroids presented here are representative of this work, but take a quite different form: they are small-format colour images. At once banal and precious, intimate and off-the-wall, they are arranged into intricately stage sketches that possess no less power than the monumental works, and which undergo their own stylistic development. The 270 original Polaroids in this exhibition reveal a hitherto little known body of work. The show is divided into four distinct series: "Polaroids SX-70 - 1975/1976", "Naturally- 1982/1985", "En regard - 1986/1988" and "The Principle of Cruelty- 1989/ 2000". Polaroid SX 70 - 1975/1976 In 1975, Wolfgang Hake, a publisher in Cologne, gave Anna & Bernhard Blume a Polaroid SX 70 as a gift. Trials and playful application of the instant camera give rise to "Polaroid subversion of photographic realism", running counter to the flourishing belief in a "photographic ontology". A few flash photographs produce "reflexive fade-ins and transcendental diffusion" of the invisible towards the visible. Aesthetic adaptation of the 16 photochemical layers of the SX 70 for an alchemistic use of photography as painting. Naturally - 1982/1985 The Green movement in 1980s Germany. The "Greens" - and the natural shamanism of Joseph Beuys. The series of Polaroids entitled Naturally is both a paraphrase of this artistic shamanism and a physical deconstruction of the Romantic cliché of "Nature". In parallel, the feminist movement in the 1980s. - The role of women in patriarchal society and Anna Blume's visual illustration of the question: "Are women able to think?" - An ironic departure from the ideological fixation and latent fundamentalism of these contemporary discourses. - A methodical subversion of aesthetic and photographic clichés via Polaroid. En regard - 1986/1988 Portraits facing each other with a shared destiny and displayed alongside all kinds of plastic objects. - Colourful objectivization of subjects via Polaroid demonstration of "magical determinism". - Destructive reduction of the "portrait" category, brought down to the level of an object. - A new truth: objects are related to us, perhaps they even have related identities. - I, you, he, she, it…they're actually made of plastic! (As Freud thought). The Principle of Cruelty - 1989/2000 "Truths must be robust." (Clément Rosset) - New experiments with mutual "self-perception as alter-perception". - Over the years, and in parallel with the Rosset's rigid enlightenments on "the idiocy of the Real", reciprocal photographic objectivization tends towards the cruel/grotesque. - The spectacle of form and colour in the orgy of Polaroid, like painting with different means. - A definitive denial of the mythology of the portrait and the autonomy of the subject it invokes. - An-aesthesia of the "cruelly real". Curated by Emmanuelle de l'Ecotais Guided visits : Guided visits are available for groups, schools, subscribers and individual visitors. For more information, see "Events/Guided Visits". Catalogue : A catalogue is available, published by Walther König. For more information, see "Books and films/Books".