The Blumes began their artistic collaboration in 1970, producing what
they have called a “lifelong photo-novel.” In their work, the artists perform
the roles of a typical German middle-class couple, but the situations they
enact for the camera are hilarious, odd, and out of control. The contrast
between nor­malcy and eccentricity is evident in Oedipal Complications,
in which Bernhard Blume and his mother jump, twist, roll, and collapse, not on
a playground or in a gymnasium, but amid the quaint furnishings of a living
room.