"Origin Story", 2022

Acrylic latex paint on aluminum-core fabricated wood panel with reconstituted wood veneer

233,7 x 137 x 4,5 cm (92 x 54 x 1 3/4 in.)

About the work

Colour as content defines the work of Odili Donald Odita, whose painting merges formalist histories with atavistic cultural experience. Sharply defined wedges and shapes of colour abrade, intersect and overlap, simultaneously connoting pure forms and evocative poetic associations. There is no neutrality in Odili’s dynamic compositions: all parts of the territory are occupied by discourse - spanning from the textiles and textures of Africa to the arid formalism of late-1960s Colour Field painting. Each form carries a double meaning within ultra-smooth, complexly sectioned compositions that refute modernism’s grid - pulsing with new rhythmic geometry.