Marcel Odenbach: So oder so

With the exhibition Marcel Odenbach: So oder so the Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen is presenting a comprehensive overview of a multifaceted oeuvre that looks back on 45 years of contemporaneity. Marcel Odenbach’s cinematic collages, installations, and performances have contributed to making video art a key medium of international contemporary art. Parallel to this, an extensive body of works on paper has been created over the course of more than four decades, ranging from drawings and concept plans to large, powerful collages. With a selection of roughly 60 video works and works on paper, the exhibition at K21 sheds light on how Odenbach always views art and culture from a socio-political perspective and at the same time relies on the sensual-aesthetic strength of images.

The artist Marcel Odenbach (b. 1953), who lives in Cologne, Berlin, and periodically in Biriwa, Ghana, has been working with video since 1976. His artistic approach is driven by a strong awareness of the historical-social and transcultural topics of the time. Using the means of collage and montage and always in connection with his own biography, Odenbach works on politically and culturally relevant issues in the media of video and paper. Odenbach reflects on the image politics of RAF terrorism, deals with the repression of the Nazi era and the resurgence of anti-Semitism, and questions clichés of the foreign and exotic. In his works, he illuminates the impact and after-effects of European colonialism in Africa, examining, for example, the genocide in Rwanda and the persistence of colonial structures in today’s Togo.

With his characteristic balance of subjective perspective, objectifiable interest in historical-documentary material, and a fascination for the subtle effect of images, Odenbach is one of the most internationally acclaimed artists of his generation.

Curator: Doris Krystof

Biography
Marcel Odenbach was born in Cologne on July 7, 1953 and studied Architecture, Art History, and Semiotics at the RWTH Aachen from 1974 to 1979. Together with Ulrike Rosenbach and Klaus vom Bruch, he founded the production group ATV (Alternative Television) in Cologne in the mid-1970s, which broadcast an alternative television program to surrounding households in a guerrilla-like manner using the technological possibilities of the time. In the course of the 1980s, Odenbach received increasing attention as a video artist, also internationally (1984 participation in the exhibitions Het lumineuse beeld at the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam and Von hier aus – Zwei Monate neue deutsche Kunst in Düsseldorf; 1986 invitation for a contribution to the Contemporary Art Television Fund, Boston; 1987 participation in documenta 8, exhibition at the Centre Pompidou, etc.). In addition to his artistic work with the medium of video, from around 1990 onwards he also created large-scale paper collages using his own uniquely developed technique. In the first decades of the twenty-first century, Odenbach realized large cinematographic installations in addition to the technically increasingly elaborate collages for numerous international solo exhibitions and is often involved in group exhibitions. Since 2014, the exhibition tour Marcel Odenbach-Stille Bewegungen | Tranquil Motions, organized by ifa (Institut für Auslandsbeziehungen), has been disseminating Odenbach’s works worldwide (with venues in, among others, Venezuela: Museo de Arte Contemporanéo de Caracas; Brazil: Museu de Arte do Rio Grande do Sul Ado Malagoli, Porto Alegre; and India, National Gallery of Modern Art, Mumbai). Solo exhibitions were recently organized by the Kunsthalle Wien, Vienna (Beweis zu nichts, 2017) and the Kunsthalle Nürnberg, Nuremberg (Es brennt, 2020). Since 1992, in addition to numerous workshops on video art around the world, Marcel Odenbach has been continuously active as a professor of video art (Karlsruhe University of Arts and Design, the Academy of Media Arts Cologne, and the State Academy of Art in Düsseldorf) and has exerted a great influence on younger generations. In November 2021, Marcel Odenbach will be awarded the Wolfgang Hahn Prize.

#MarcelOdenbach / #K21

The exhibition is accompanied by a catalog (German/English) published by Hirmer Verlag, Munich, with graphic design by Petra Hollenbach, Cologne. Edited by Susanne Gaensheimer and Doris Krystof, with contributions by Nils Emmerichs, Barbara Engelbach, Cécile Huber, Doris Krystof, Hans Nieswandt, Kolja Reichert, and Marcel Wälde. Numerous illustrations, 250 pages, price: approx. 39 €.

On the occasion of the exhibition, a double vinyl album with compositions by Richard Ojijo will also be released, documenting his twenty-year collaboration with Marcel Odenbach.

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