Rediscovering the Teaching and Prototype Collection of the Kaiser Wilhelm Museum
German history and world history incessantly collide in the video works, installations and collages by Marcel Odenbach, forcing viewers to think about the other and oneself, about identity and responsibility. For the Collection Satellite #6 Marcel Odenbach has chosen a rare photo archive as the starting point for his work with the collection at the Kunstmuseen Krefeld.
The reading room of the Kaiser Wilhelm Museum as it existed around 1900 can be also characterised as a picture workshop. A vast number of reproductions show a history of art from classical antiquity to the late 19th century. All of these many individual illustrations waited for a user who recognised art historical developments and saw combinations. Over a century later, Marcel Odenbach assumes this role in conjunction with Collection Satellite # 6, addressing in this way a forgotten chapter in the history of the Kaiser Wilhelm Museum: the Teaching and Prototype Collection assembled by Friedrich Deneken during his tenure as the first director. With the found footage available in Krefeld Marcel Odenbach renegotiates the perception of and reflection on pictures.
Marcel Odenbach (born 1953 in Cologne, Germany) is one of the internationally best-known video artists of the second generation. He studied architecture, art history and semiotics at the Technische Hochschule Aachen from 1974 to 1979. He has been a professor for media art at various academies and universities since 1990, at present at the Kunstakademie in Düsseldorf. Odenbach lives in Berlin and Cape Coast, Ghana, and works in Cologne.
In the Collection Satellites series the Kunstmuseen Krefeld invite artists twice a year to engage in dialogue with its collection and the museum.
A catalog accompanies the exhibition.
The Foundation for Art, Culture, and Social Projects of Sparda-Bank West is the partner of the Collection Satellites series.
suddenly, one could be just like the other, Video (german only)
Verzettelungen, 2020, by Marcel Odenbach