Laurent Odelain

Born in 1985, Laurent Odelain grew up in an isolated countryside of northeastern France, exploited, transformed and hurt since the 60's by intensive agriculture and forestry. He is marked by vast and depopulated landscapes where humans have a discreet but omnipresent and profound hold on the wilderness.  

Laurent Odelain is a dreamer. When he is active, he builds shapes that appear in his sensitive discovery of unknown territories. He walks and acts in the landscape, looking for materials that can reveal philosophical or mythical figures and characters. Then, Laurent Odelain plays somewhere between performance, sculpture, and writing. Video and photography come afterwards to record something in the landscape that tells stories of a human way of doing. He shows this through installations linking materials, forms he has created and pictures. His works reveal a simple experience of living poetry, as if to celebrate the occurrence and fragility of life, in the face of the ravages of our dying capitalist civilization. Laurent Odelain has a particular attraction to natural entities that he considers more than alive and worthy, especially rivers, lakes, mountains, skies, plants and all wild animalities. For him, art is a way to celebrate them as matrices of hope. Laurent Odelain lives in Strasbourg, France. While anticipating the birth of a world less affected by humans, he seeks to escape to find wonders on his daily path.  

In the last ten years, Laurent Odelain has presented his images and tools in several events and exhibitions in France, Canada, Poland and Germany. Notably, he was hosted in residency at the art center Langage Plus in Alma (Quebec) in 2017 as well as at the contemporary art center Łażnia in Gdańsk (Poland) in the autumn of 2021.

The Residency of Laurent Odelain is supported by French Institute in Prague

Date of residency: 10.05. 2022 – 10.08. 2022