installationview Mats Hjelm Man to Man, 2000

Power, masculinity and violence are ever-present factors in Mats Hjelm's work. In his previous work, White Flight, he juxtaposed his father's documentary films of riots in Detroit 1968, with his own newly filmed footage from the same location. Through the non-linear narrative about bygone struggles and present day apathy and sorrow, it was possible to catch a glimpse of an inquiry into the structures that define our perception of masculinity and violence. Present in the work, as a subtext, was Mats Hjelm's relationship to his father.

It is this subtext that Mats Hjelm highlights in his new work, which can be considered as a continuation of White Flight and the second instalment in a proposed trilogy about men's legacy to each other. He returns to his father's documentary footage, but this time the political positions are no longer the centre of attention. Nor is Man to Man a clear narrative about an event or a place. Rather Man to Man is an attempt to focus on vague, unarticulated attitudes and power structures. It has been an investigation between the lines of his father's work, among what glistens briefly alongside the 'big stories' about war and conflict in various parts of the world. In a transcript of an interview that accompanies the exhibition, Mats Hjelm comments: "I'm searching for the kind of things I recognise. After things I have a feeling about, after something that influences me, not as a possible subject of debate but as an image /.../ the foundation to a political position."

Welcome!

Helena Holmberg

Man to Man is a 3-channel DVD installation, continuously looped without intermission during our opening hours.

Thanks to Olivier Guerpillon of the French Embassy and Isabel Ferreire of the Portuguese Embassy. Special thanks to Jesper Johansson, whose assistance was vital to the production of Man to Man. The exhibition is part of XPOseptember - Stockholm's Festival of Photography.