Marcel Odenbach, D
"Ich mache die Schmerzprobe"
D 1984/85, Video, 6:30 min, col
Editors: Marcel Odenbach, M. Ferber
With: Gisbert Pohlmann, Manfred Darmer.
Music: Don Giovanni, Mozart; Produced by Video-Inn, Cologne
The crack of a whip repeats insistently throughout this provocative work, which posits male body-building as a charged metaphor for authoritarian structures. With this undercurrent of discipline and punishment, Odenbach conflates the construction of the physical body with the psychological, pain with pleasure, seduction with oppression. Fragmented images of a man working out on exercise machines are intercut with Baroque statuary and architecture, and male action scenes from Hollywood films. Isolated in panels that divide the screen into a triptych, the movements of the exercise machines become threatening, the exertions of the body-builder masochistic. Odenbach's ritual pain test of Western manhood and cultural tradition ends on a view through a tattered curtain.
(Electronic Arts Intermix)
Marcel Odenbach
Geboren 1953 in Köln, lebt und arbeitet in Köln 1974-79 Technische Hochschule, Aachen, Dipl. Ing.; seit 1992 Professur an der Staatlichen Hochschule für Gestaltung, Karlsruhe Einzelausstellungen seit 1987: 1987 Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris; Galerie Ascan Crone, Hamburg 1989 Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, Madrid 1993 Galerie der Stadt Esslingen, Villa Merkel, Esslingen; Kunstverein Braunschweig 1994 Kunst- und Ausstellungshalle der BRD, Bonn; Galerie Stampa, Basel; Eigen + Art, Leipzig 1996 Sprengel Museum, Hannover; Firehouse, Harlem, New York 1997 Staatliche Kunstsammlung Liechtenstein; Goethe Institut, London 1998 New Museum of Contemporary Art, New York 1999 Galerie Stampa, Basel Gruppenausstellungen seit 1987: 1987 L'Èpoque, la mode, la morale, la passion, Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris; documenta IIX, Kassel 1989 Video-Skulptur: Retrospektiv und Aktuell 1963-1989, Kunstverein Köln 1991 Metropolis, Martin-Gropius-Bau, Berlin 1993 Mediale, Deichtorhallen, Hamburg; Allegorie de la richesse, Humboldt Universität, Berlin 1994 Medienbiennale, Leipzig 1996 Museum für Gegenwartskunst, Basel 1997 Deutschlandbilder, Martin-Gropius-Bau, Berlin; Anton Kern Gallery, New York