Stadtmuseum München, March 2017, groupshow "No Secrets"

Az. X/1613/80

The pictures of the installation Az. X/1613/80 by Jens Masmann show completely different places and people, which seem to be linked to each other in a mysterious way. The Aesthetics of his photographs and their arrangement - despite their hyper stylisation - visually are somehow reminiscent of the way how police and secret service are working. In their profiling of a crime, they are as well combining pictures like parts of a jigsaw to visualize what happened and to come closer to its resolution. The Scenarios shown in Masmann’s installation asoociate to the viewer conspiratorial meetings and secret handovers.

In reality all of Masmann’s pictures are not related to each other, but are from his archive and were taken at very different places at different times. The artist just added some key pictures to his tableau, which show completely harmless technical equipment.

So Masmann’s installation only makes use of the aesthetics of some methods of the police and secret service and wants to seduce the viewer to add a new meaning and put the people and places shown in the pictures into a new context.

Rudolf Scheutle, Stadtmuseum München