MARCEL ODENBACH
MARCEL ODENBACH
uses for his video film materials with emblematic images loaded with symbols. The images for the viewer familiar with the media stand for historical events or social problems. Odenbach uses film cuts and techniques of dissolving and comparing images to produce an associative construction of descriptive or conflicting images which place familiar topics in new contexts and thus allow for discussion. The spatial arrangement of the film fragments integrate and challenge the viewer’s own stance.
Since 1975 Marcel Odenbach has been working with video and has since then considerably influenced the medium’s potential artistic use. The exhibition Auch wenn der Fahrer ein anderer ist, der Lastwagen bleibt der Gleiche (even when the driver is another, the truck remains the same) was created together in close collaboration with the artist and will present altogether eight installations and a selection of videos.The exhibition will present an overview of Marcel Odenbach’s work up to the present with work from the early 70s and into the 90s up until now. Besides being retrospective, the exhibition focuses on certain topics.
Two persisting complex issues in Marcel Odenbach’s works are Germany and its history before and after reunification and the issues of migration and minorities. The connection can be made between the consequences of the aftermath of the German trauma like the holocaust, terrorism, or the dividing of Germany and with questions of dealing German identity. Similarly, the connection can be made between placing of images from African countries and the United States in collage form behind superficial images from the media and evokes motives like escapism and oppression. The artistic combination of images from the media exposes them as a part of the complex “truth”. Odenbach integrates himself and his biography in many of his works.
Through the spatial confrontation with the installations, the meaning of the individual’s subjective participation in the construction of collective consciousness is conveyed. “Germany” and “minority” as important aspects of Marcel Odenbach’s works are implied with the title of the exhibition. “Even if the driver may be different, the truck remains the same” is the refrain in a song sung in an African country after an election was then immediately forbidden. This also characterizes the current political atmosphere in Germany. Marcel Odenbach considers collecting a crucial component of his artistic work. And a decisive criterion of this collecting – this way precluding arbitrariness and an inundation with materials – is a subjective choice. Which mainly leaves shots nobody has used before, the very personal scenes often happening by chance, and pictures beside and off the mainstream appeal, pictures too that do not fit into politics. “Nearly all the pictures I have collected have survived their topicality and that’s why I display them. Publishing them comes down to a sharing, and this sharing is a sort of disposing. For who owns also carries a burden. In this case not just a material but equally an emotional one” (Marcel Odenbach).
An exhibition in cooperation with the Frankfurter Kunstverein. Curator: Nicolaus Schafhausen
Marcel Odenbach (*1953 Köln), Ursula Blickle award-winner 2002, is since 19 professor at Artcollege for Media, Cologne. Since 1978 international solo-exhibitions in museums and galleries. Last e.g.: 2002 Frankfurter Kunstverein, 2001 Museum het Valkhof, Nijmegen, 1999 Kölnischer Kunstverein, Centre Julio Gonzalez, Valencia, 1998 New Museum of Contemporary Art, New York.
The publication, “Blenden/Blends”, edited by Vanessa Joan Müller und Nicolaus Schafhausen from the Kunstverein Frankfurt together with the Museum für Moderne Kunst, Frankfurt am Main and with Kunstraum Innsbruck will be available during the exhibition. Texts by Dan Cameron, Jörg Heiser, Kobena Mercer, Vanessa Joan Müller, Marcel Odenbach, Astrid Wege; preface by Nicolaus Schafhausen, German/English, Lukas & Sternberg, ISBN 0-9711193-8-4
