| EXHIBITION |
Solo
Marcel Odenbach exhibition: Stille Bewegungen | Tranquil Motions.
Marcel Odenbach
An exhibition by The Institut für Auslandsbeziehungen (ifa)/ Institute for Foreign Cultural Relations, Stuttgart, Germany
Curator: Matthias Mühling
Exhibition Opening: March 6, 2022 | 3.30 - 5.30 PM
Exhibition period: 6 March - 6 June 2022
At MAIIAM Contemporary Art Museum, Chiang Mai, Thailand
Exhibition in Thailand co-organised by Goethe-institut Thailand and MAIIAM Contemporary Art Museum
MAIIAM Contemporary Art Museum and Goethe-institut Thailand are delighted to present the traveling exhibition MARCEL ODENBACH: STILLE BEWEGUNGEN. TRANQUIL MOTIONS. An exhibition by The Institut für Auslandsbeziehungen (ifa) in collaboration with the curator Matthias Mühling, thirteen selected works from the past three decades, including video tapes, video installations, and works on paper, exemplify the artist’s output. The combination of exhibits unfolds a panorama of Odenbach’s entire oeuvre, illuminating how the artist studies different cultures and paints a portrait, as analytical as it is emotional, of the human being in a globalized society.
Marcel Odenbach, who was born in Cologne in 1953, is a pioneer of video art. His works on video and video installations attest to his crucial role in promoting and shaping the international development of this genre. From the early videos, which were still conceived for presentation on monitors, to his complex installations including large projections, the exhibition illustrates the subtlety and formal variety with which Odenbach stages the moving picture and its acoustic accompaniment. The works on paper constitute a separate and no less important part of his oeuvre.
The selection of works for the exhibition combines this retrospective orientation with an attempt to cover the major thematic emphases in the artist’s oeuvre. The close critical engagement with the problem of how to deal with the past, in particular, illustrates that his art is an exemplary reflection on the German post-war era and its social situation. Yet Marcel Odenbach also worked early on to embed this thematic emphasis in a wider horizon, expanding on the specifically German issues to achieve a more universal perspective.
He studied different cultures and political constellations and integrated his observations into his work, drawing connections between the German trauma of Nazi rule and the Rwandan genocide, between images of masculinity in Turkey and the role of women in Venezuela, between the familiar and the foreign, between his own biography and the history of others.
MARCEL ODENBACH: STILLE BEWEGUNGEN. THE TRANQUIL MOTIONS exhibition was first on view in 2014 and traveled from South America, Asia, and Australia. To give this panorama of cultures greater focus at the various venues of the touring exhibition, ifa has asked the artist to select one of the works on display in the exhibition that the presentation in each region will emphasize. It will receive a prominent place in the gallery and be addressed in ways designed to stimulate the local discourse and specific discussion. The exhibition will be displayed from 6 March to 6 June 2022 with an exhibition reception on March 6, 2022 from 3.30 - 5.30 PM.
Installation View
