Announcing: M/M (Paris)’s new monograph

Founded in 1992 by Michaël Amzalag and Mathias Augustyniak, originally as a graphic design studio, M/M (Paris) has been defying all forms of categorisation for almost 30 years. As thinkers and practitioners of the image, together they have pushed the boundaries of graphic design, through their projects at the intersection of different creative fields.

M/M conceive their practice as a sustained production of signs and images at the basis of their work—with which they construct a visual language that is both complex and exhilarating. Simultaneously Apollinian and Dionysian, their dualism confronts the universal and the particular, the conscious and the unconscious, combining the freedom of drawing with the need for the structures inherent in design.

By collaborating with contemporary artists such as François Curlet, Philippe Parreno, Pierre Huyghe and Sarah Morris; musicians Björk, Benjamin Biolay, Etienne Daho, Kanye West, Lou Doillon, Madonna or Vanessa Paradis; fashion designers and brands such as Alexander McQueen, Loewe, Louis Vuitton, Miuccia Prada, Nicolas Ghesquière or Yohji Yamamoto; theatre directors such as Éric Vigner and Arthur Nauzyciel; and by rethinking iconic magazines such as Interview, Purple Fashion or Vogue Paris, M/M have been building a visual atlas of the creative landscape since the early 1990s.

In this A to Z, beginning and ending with the letter M, interviews with Michaël Amzalag and Mathias Augustyniak frame 850 images of their projects, interspersed with a series of conversations with rarely-heard personalities. Designers Peter Saville, Experimental Jetset, Cornel Windlin and Katsumi Asaba; fashion designers Miuccia Prada and Jonathan Anderson; artist Francesco Vezzoli; director of photography Darius Khondji; chef Jean-François Piège, director Arthur Nauzyciel and curator Hans Ulrich Obrist discuss their practices and that of M/M, while a foreword by philologist Donatien Grau and an afterword by art critic Éric Troncy bookends these conversations. An in-depth study of one of the most radical and influential creative forces in the contemporary cultural sphere, Volume II of M to M of M/M (Paris) completes the first volume of their monograph published in 2012.

On the occasion of the publication, the Musée des Arts Décoratifs and the Musée d’Orsay, Paris are joining forces for the first time, to invite M/M (Paris) to take over their galleries and insert their work within their permanent collections, through a double exhibition on either side of the Seine entitled From one M/Museum to another. In parallel, M/Made in Shanghai, the first retrospective exhibition of M/M (Paris) in China is presented at the Power Station of Art, Shanghai’s gigantic museum of contemporary art located in a former electric power station, reinterpreting their works on the scale of the Asian megalopolis.

M to M of M/M (Paris) will be available to purchase here later this month.