Jack Shainman Gallery is excited to announce the publication of Odili Donald Odita, a comprehensive monograph spanning over three decades of Odita’s singular career. Please join us for a discussion between Odili Donald Odita and contributing writers Ugochukwu-Smooth Nzewi and Gregory Volk alongside Ian Sternthal, who edited, designed, and published the book.
The event will take place Saturday, February 11th, 3:30 PM at 513 West 20th Street, where Odita’s current exhibition Burning Cross is also on view.
Please note the conversation will be recorded, and a live stream will be available at this link.
Odili Donald Odita, published by Sternthal Books, spans three decades of Odita’s artistic practice from his early mixed media collages to recent paintings, site-specific installations, and more. The book’s discrete black and white cover betrays a striking panoply of colors, papers, and creative layouts that make up the book’s 400+ pages. The design mixes and layers drawings, geometric studies, paintings, installations, and texts to reveal momentary connections between different aspects of Odita’s practice, echoing his artistic pursuit of fusing disparate and varied colors into spiritually unified spaces.
The monograph, inspired both by African and American design traditions, illustrates Odita’s paintings alongside a trove of materials from his ‘Black Album’ portfolio, a collection of ads, photographs, and media clippings related to race and culture that he has been collecting for many years. Placing his work in relation to this personal archive considers Odita’s abstract expressionism within a political context of struggle, race, and diaspora, resulting in a timely meditation on race in America.
Order your copy through Sternthal Books here!
