Wallworks
photo: Ira Schrank, Sixth Street Studio
POST-PERFECT
(2009)
Odili Donald Odita
b. 1966, Enugu, Nigeria. Lives and works in Philadelphia.
Acrylic latex wall paint on wall
Wall 1- 13 x 21 feet, Wall 2- 13 x 30 feet, Wall 3- 11.5 x 27 feet, Wall 4- 13 x 10 feet, Wall 5- 25.5 x 155.5 feet
Courtesy of the artist and Jack Shainman Gallery
Odili Donald Odita has spoken of his vibrantly-hued paintings as representative of the texture of life. Taking cues from wallpaper, computer screen savers, television test patterns, and African textiles, Odita infuses his work with the colors of his native Nigeria, his hometown of Columbus, Ohio, and all the shades encountered during his travels. Beyond the personal aspects of color, the extensive spectrum is also used metaphorically to engage in a dialogue inclusive of the erstwhile neglected “other.” Employing the formal language of modernism, Odita paints “back to the center,” in the parlance of postcolonial discourse, in order to re-tell a more expansive tale of world histories in a blending of Western modernism and African culture.
Continuing with the chromatic theme, a study of the five walls at YBCA on which Odita has focused his energies reveals an underlying structure whereby measured increments of color are carefully placed on the walls in the artist’s signature zip patterns. A systematic method of picture-making is in effect, but is used to cause a chaotic, turbulent sensation. Funneled through the entrance of the exhibition, the viewer is made aware of the surroundings by the destabilization of the environment. When confronted with the tallest vertical wall, the viewer is further made aware of the environment by the chevron-like shapes whose zigzags mimic the sharp switchback of the stairs and whose patches of magenta echo the magenta of the bamboo court nearby. While representing the texture of YBCA, Odita also carries on the underlying discussion in his work of, essentially, modernizing modernism. In placing his art on the surface of a building designed in the modernist mold, he is attempting to recast the legacy of modernism and, as the title of his piece suggests, advance the notion of a future which brings the past up to date by elaborating upon and complicating that legacy.
Odita has had recent solo exhibitions at the Institute for Contemporary Art at the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, as well as Jack Shainman Gallery and the Studio Museum in Harlem, both in New York. Group exhibitions include, Contemporary Art of Africa and the African Diaspora, High Museum of Art, Atlanta and The Shape of Colour: Excursions in Colour Field Art, 1950-2005, Art Gallery of Ontario. He was also included in the 52nd Venice Biennale in 2007.
— Thien Lam