Lucas Odahara,
Still Men/ Engine 1848
Still Men/ Engine 1948 is on display in Projektraum Kunstquartier Bethanien Gallery August 25th – 10th of Spetember.
Still Men and Engine 1848 look at the river as an active character in the making of history. In 2022, Odahara installed a series of paintings on ceramic tiles in the Svartan River in Sweden. The panels depicted male figures from canonic western paintings either sleeping or dead. Partly submerged, the work addressed water as a space for the renegotiation of the masculine and western histories of representation.
In this new installation in the Künstlerhaus Bethanien in Kreuzberg, Odahara revisits the piece—now out of water—and pairs it with a new drawing of a steam engine, based on the one that was thrown in the Luisenstadt Canal (a waterway that used to exist in the vicinity of the Bethanien) over 150 years ago. The engine was thrown in the water as a symbol of labor resistance in the 1848 revolution in Berlin, which was violently suppressed. Ten workers were killed for the act by the police.
In this new installation in the Künstlerhaus Bethanien in Kreuzberg, Odahara revisits the piece—now out of water—and pairs it with a new drawing of a steam engine, based on the one that was thrown in the Luisenstadt Canal (a waterway that used to exist in the vicinity of the Bethanien) over 150 years ago. The engine was thrown in the water as a symbol of labor resistance in the 1848 revolution in Berlin, which was violently suppressed. Ten workers were killed for the act by the police.