German artist Marcel Odenbach's work on display in Mumbai

Video and paper works by one of Germanys prominent video artists, Marcel Odenbach, highlighting the key themes in the 65-year-old artist's rich oeuvre, are being exhibited at the National Gallery of Modern Art (NGMA) here.

Titled "Stille Bewegungen/Tranquil Motions", the monographic show includes key video works and works on paper from the past three decades.

Odenbach's videos and graphic works are complex narratives created by montaging public and private imagery -- recorded film and television footage, archival material, and pictures he has produced himself, NGMA said in a statement on Saturday.

From early videos, which were still conceived for presentation on monitors, to his complex installations including large projections, the exhibition illustrates the subtlety and formal variety with which Odenbach stages the moving picture and its acoustic accompaniment, it added.

A visual storyteller, he spins together the larger historical context "with the emotions of the individual human being and his own biography".

His perspective on the larger world, looked at through the German lens, also expands on German post-war era and its social situation.

Odenbach's portrait of the human being, visible in his panoramic work -- often termed as analytical as well as emotional -- shows her/him in the globalised society.

"He studied different cultures and political constellations, and integrated his observations into his work, drawing connections between the German trauma of Nazi rule and the Rwandan genocide, between images of masculinity in Turkey and the role of women in Venezuela, between the familiar and the foreign, between his own biography and the history of others," the statement said.

The exhibition, organised by the Goethe-Institut in India, is open for viewing till November 30.

--IANS

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