Matthias Odin Born in 1995 in Lyon, France

Lives and works in Paris, France

While he engages with universal themes such as wandering, encounter, disorientation, self-construction, and adaptation, the work of Matthias Odin is deeply autobiographical and introspective. The essence of his practice lies in the assembly and transformation of collected objects, which serve as anchor points for questioning relationships to spaces and environments. Odin is interested in the notion of patina ; he explores how the passage of years leaves its imprint on bodies, objects, and ideas. The notion of parallax—the shift between perception and reality—is among the principles guiding his research, alongside a sustained attention to the body and movement.

His works evoke familiar spaces, whether permanent or temporary: at times a student studio furnished with standardized objects, at others an improvised workshop within a disused warehouse. Upon arriving in Paris, Matthias Odin found himself compelled to occupy marginalized spaces, sometimes clandestinely. These experiences have profoundly shaped his reflections on the occupation of urban space and on the strategies individuals develop to inhabit it. The city, in revealing tensions between freedom and constraint thus appears as a kind of vortex.

The physical gesture is central to his work: the body acts as the agent that constructs, assembles, and transforms surrounding objects, imbuing them with new relationships and meanings. Through this process of détournement, Odin has developed a distinctive material vocabulary: spheres and rubber balls he produces himself, ersatz IKEA-like objects, as well as concrete, steel, and glass. Together, they form a formal language that runs throughout his practice. Video, sound, and photography regularly extend and enrich his installations, creating immersive environments for the viewer.

By subverting museography aesthetic in the staging of these affected objects, a conceptual distance is created within the subjects presented, in a play of shadow and light, absence and presence.

His exhibitions, presented in institutions and galleries such as Galerie Peter Kilchmann, the Frac Île-de-France, IAC Villeurbanne, and Galerie Tator, attest to his ability to transform personal experiences into universal propositions, where space, body, and object articulate a vitalist critique of contemporary living conditions and the systems that structure our existence.

A graduate of the Cergy School of Fine Arts in 2023, Matthias Odin has exhibited and collaborated with various independent spaces and institutions in France. These include the FRAC Île-de- France (Paris, FR), where he presented a solo exhibition in 2025, as well as the Centre Wallonie-Bruxelles (Paris, FR) in the same year, the IAC (Villeurbanne, FR) as part of the Lyon Biennale in 2024, and La Graineterie (Houilles, FR) also in 2024. In 2026, he inaugurated his first solo exhibition in a gallery with the Galerie Peter Kilchmann. In addition, he has been involved in several independent projects in recent years with Thundercage, YGRÈVES (a collective he co-founded), Pauline Perplexe, and a collaboration with the FRAC Corsica. Abroad, he has exhibited at the Palazzo San Giuseppe (Bari, IT), the Keiv Gallery and Okay Space (Athens, GR), the Moderna Museet (Stockholm, SE), and the Working Title Gallery (Amsterdam, NL). During his years in Cergy, Matthias Odin co-founded the Ygreves collective. This was the starting point for his relationship with places and the development of a method that consists of seeking and understanding forms through movement and gathering, collecting objects and ersatz items. He curates and co-curates exhibitions in abandoned interstitial architectures—old docks, underground galleries, etc. He also founded the ephemeral space Galerie LA.