VISUAL ARTS + MUSEUMS

The Contemporary Arts Museum Houston presents the exhibition Perspectives 169: Odili Donald Odita.  Gallery walk-through with the artist: Thursday, February 11, 6:30pm; Opening reception: Thursday, February 11, 6:30-9pm. On view February 12-May 2, 2010.

The pulsating hues and precise abstract, geometric shapes of Odili Donald Odita’s paintings function as social and physical landscapes although they are devoid of any discernible figuration. For his solo exhibition Perspectives 169: Odili Donald Odita, the artist will debut new work including large-scale paintings on canvas and a suite of “drawings” painted on Plexiglas. Inspired by the architecture of the Museum and the social environment of Houston, Odita will create a site-specific exhibition: a landscape where angular shapes and intersecting lines become metaphors for time and place, and color is the mood and rhythm of the city.

Widely recognized for his pulsating hues and meticulously painted wall and canvas works, Odili Donald Odita creates paintings that often function as narratives. Although devoid of any discernable figurative marks, the works tell of the nomadic journey of our ever-shifting global society: shapes and intersecting lines become metaphors for time and place while color evokes mood and impulse. Perspectives 169: Odili Donald Odita features a site-specific environment created from a new body of paintings that echo the unique architectural features of the Museum’s lower gallery space, The Zilkha Gallery. The result is a familiar, yet fantastical immersive landscape.

While Odita’s wall works often find corollary references to those of Sol LeWitt, his angular pulsating color fields immediately hint at the artist’s cultural roots—he was born in Enugu, Nigeria and raised in Columbus, Ohio. Odita’s abstract paintings suggest the fractal nature of his own experience as an African émigré and the interweaving of his past and present selves.

Odili Donald Odita received a BFA (with distinction) in painting from Ohio State University and an MFA from Vermont’s Bennington College in 1990. He has been included in many national and international group exhibitions, including 52nd Venice Biennale (2007); DAK’ART 2004, Dakar Biennial of Contemporary African Art; Fiction of Authenticity: Contemporary Africa Abroad, Contemporary Art Museum, St. Louis, MO (2003); Black President, New Museum, New York (2003); and 2nd Johannesburg Biennale (1997). Solo exhibition and project venues include Institute of Contemporary Art, Philadelphia (2008); Contemporary Arts Center, Cincinnati (2007); Studio Museum in Harlem (2007); Haunch of Venison (Galerie Judin Belot), Zurich, Switzerland (2004), among many others.

Perspectives 169: Odili Donald Odita is organized by Valerie Cassel Oliver, curator for the Contemporary Arts Museum Houston, and will be accompanied by a Perspectives-format catalogue with an interview by Cassel Oliver, reproductions of exhibited work, and the artist’s biography.

Pictured:  Odili Donald Odita, detail Inside Out, 2008. Acrylic on canvas, 24 x 30 inches. Courtesy the artist and Jack Shainman Gallery, NY.  (Full image below).