Title of the exhibition: Frenetic Standstill

 Frenetic Standstill encompass three video installations; Wald (Forest 2007), Der Wanderer (The Wanderer 2007) and Das Gespenst des Glücks (The Ghost of Happiness 2011). The curatorial line of this exhibition will draw from a common denominator found in these installations: the gap between our frenetic desire to 'get there' and our struggles to achieve something desired, promised, or predicted. Max Philipp Schmid slows our gaze and for a brief moment, we are almost able to catch the unattainable.

See also:  Inarts Lab: Max Philipp Schmid and Chantal Molleur presentation

Schmid questions our human fascination to control time. He is able through his technical manipulation of the medium to go beyond the simple representation of the embodiment of a moment and time almost stands still.

In his installation Wald (Forest), the observer is plunged into the picture. Through a special editing technique the Forest can be perceived in an almost 3-dimensional perspective and seems either to be approaching the observer or retreating from him. The spectator can only see a fragment of the picture missing out the landscape.

Although we always fail to make tangible or visible what nature does best, Max Philipp Schmid challenges himself to go beyond imitation in his creative process and succeeds to catch, control and manipulate reality.

In his 2007 installation Der Wanderer (The Wanderer), the energy of his protagonist is not only taking him nowhere, it is slowly turning against him and he becomes paralyzed. In his 2011 installation, Das Gespenst des Glücks (The Ghost of Happiness), Schmidreenacts a Hollywood musical that fails to find that perfect original movement, melancholy stands at the end between the two protagonists. In this installation, he manipulates virtuously the image and the sound to the extend of freeing time’s impact on his protagonists.

Biographies

Artist: Max Philipp Schmid

Max Philipp Schmid was born in Basel, Switzerland in 1962. After studies in art history he qualified as a visual arts teacher at Basel’s Arts and Design University. He now works as an independent director and video-maker and since 1990 has devoted himself to creating experimental films, shorts, musical films and animation. His videos are accounts of feelings and situations no longer free of ambiguity, of bodies in search of equilibrium. Ambivalent moments, otherwise serving no purpose than that of a brief transition, become permanent. Although he typically shoots in a studio with actors, Schmid is less interested in the theatrical staging of a feeling than in his ability to use video technique to interpolate and fragment images, and with them personages, and thus propel them into his trademark destabilized state.

His works and installations have been featured among other places at the Swiss Pavilion at Expo Zaragoza 2008, plug in Basel, ZKM Karlsruhe, the Swiss Institute New York, the Museum für Gegenwartskunst Basel, the Kunsthaus Baselland and numerous festivals in Europe, Asia and North America. Several of his videos have been the recipients of distinctions, including the Golden Spire Award (Golden Globe Festival San Francisco), the Prix FNAC (Videoformes Clermont-Ferrand, France), the Prix Européen de la Création (Estavar-Llivia, Spain), the Swiss Award (Videoex Zurich) and the Award of the Canton of Lucerne (Viper Festival for Film, Video and New Media). Schmid has held several fellowships from the city of Basel and was artist in residence at the Fondérie Darling in Montreal in 2006. His work has been acquired to form part of a range of collections including the Kunsthaus Zürich, the Kunstmuseum Basel and the Ursula Blickle Video Archive at the Kunsthalle Wien, among others.

Curator: Chantal Molleur

Chantal Molleur is co-founder and curator or White Frame, a Swiss nonprofit association that operates at the intersection of video art, cinema and photography (http://www.whiteframe.ch). She has worked twenty years for the Canadian media arts field before moving to Switzerland in 2005. She co-curated with Mireille Bourgeois their upcoming exhibition called (im)mobile showcasing the works of Swiss artist Edith Flückiger and Canadian artist Germaine Koh at the Dalhousie Art Gallery in Halifax, Canada. She is working with Swiss photographer Katrin Freisager and experimental filmmaker and photographer Ralph Kühne on the development of an exhibition project for Canada. She is Swiss delegate for the International Festival of Films on Art of Montreal. She is also holding a position as promoter for the video and animation departments of the Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and arts.