A pioneer of video art, Marcel Odenbach’s (b. 1952, Cologne, Germany) works attest to his role in promoting and shaping the international development of this genre. From early videos, which were conceived for presentation on monitors, to his larger projections, the exhibition illustrates the subtlety and formal variety with which Odenbach stages the moving picture and its acoustic accompaniment.

Together with his works on paper, the exhibition Marcel Odenbach – Tranquil Motions critically engages with the issue of how to deal with the past, within the context of the German post-war era, with reflections upon its social situation that is relevant in international perspectives.

Odenbach’s video and graphic works are complex narratives the artist creates by means of a unique collage technique, using recorded film, television footage, archival material and pictures he has produced himself. Montaging public and private imagery, he recreates stories that interweave the larger frame of history with emotions of the individual human being, and his own biography.

His study of different cultures and political constellations draws connections between the German trauma of Nazi rule and the Rwandan genocide; images of masculinity in Turkey and the role of women in Venezuela; the familiar and the foreign; as well as his own biography and the history of others.

Produced by Institut für Auslandsbeziehungen (ifa) and curated by Matthias Mühling, this exhibition in Singapore is co-organised by the NTU ADM Gallery and the Goethe Institute. The selection 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 globalised society.