Matthias Odin:

Vortex aEra Player

Institut d’art contemporain (FRAC Rhône-Alpes)

17ème Biennale d’Art Contemporain de Lyon

Villeurbanne, France,

 

*Here, remembrance becomes the monument of the portal, something that humans will photograph during their working days or vacations. Some will turn it into a song, wondering who could have cut/copied/pasted plastic and paper, mixed sediments and turned it into an exhibition. At the point, only the maker’s initials distinguish the original model from its replica. Places don’t function as mere backdrops, framing memories. On the contrary, it’s the place that triggers the narrative. In Las Vegas, Les Lilas, Tianducheng, Slobozia, Parij, Filiatrá, Capdenac-Gare, Paris (Texas), Lahore and many others - it rises up like a cartography. It’s as if each new chapter of his existence threshold: a neighborhood, an apartment, an abandoned underground passage an abandoned underground passage, a shack by the sea... Here, each Eiffel Tower is the occasion for an unfolding of thought, an introspection or a spectral reappearance. One space contains a thousand others. Like that “other day at Les Gratte-ciel” that made my heart turn towards the polluted skies of Paris, or was it my memory that came back to play a trick on me ?

 

Algar Newton for Groupe Médiatisme

 

As part of the Lyon Biennial, Matthias invites us to cross the threshold of an environment whose familiar objects - staged and diverted from their primary use - intuitively bring us closer to a domestic interior. An architecture of the intimate, Vortex aEra Player echoes the years the artist has spent without an apartment. Matthias Odin indirectly portrays the relatives who temporarily hosted him, inviting them to present a few of their belongings. Integrated into his assemblages and underlined by a luminous aura, these memories punctuate the space of this emotional ecosystem. In the background, a critique of the standardization of our lifestyles takes shape, with the artist inviting visitors to wander through a 9 m² studio apartment, the minimum living space required by law in France.