Artist in Person Presented in cooperation with the Goethe Institute, San Francisco Since 1976, German artist Marcel Odenbach has produced a lush array of videoworks and installations plumbing the rich but troubled depths of bourgeois culture. Trained in architecture, art history and semiotics, Odenbach is at once a product of that culture and a keen critic of its aberrations. But his knowledge of the accoutrements of bourgeois life, the aspirations, the art, the history, the decor, has enabled him to achieve lyrical elegance in the midst of admonishment. This is not without its ironies. An "exile" in his own land, Odenbach uses this alienated distance in the service of his personal yet socially charged works. Invariably, these works explore the ideology of dominance as exemplified by the persistence of history and convention. For instance, Die Distanz zwischen mir und meinen Verlusten (The Distance Between Myself and My Losses, 1983) examines the dissolution of family, religion and class. Schubert's "Erlking" provides the poetic foundation in a beautifully nuanced work that values the strength necessary to bridge the distance of loss. In Ich mache die Schmerzprobe (I Do the Pain Test, 1984), Odenbach looks at forced definitions of gender by contrasting the mechanics of physical fitness with the stifling confinement of a baroque setting. As If Memories Could Deceive Me (1976) exploits the tension between individual and collective memory. Here, a pastiche of propaganda films, the music of Schumann, and fantasized moments creates a personal history from which the artist's memories are derived. In his first Bay Area appearance, Marcel Odenbach will discuss the intent of his classically conceived media art, as well as screen a handsome sampling of recent videoworks. --Steve Seid Odenbach's installation, Die Einen den Anderen, can be viewed at the S.F. Museum of Modern Art's current exhibition, Passage d'Image.