Exhibition
Odili Donald Odita. The Velocity of Change
11 Dec 2015 – 30 Jan 2016
Regular hours
- Friday
- 10:00 – 18:00
- Saturday
- 10:00 – 18:00
- Tuesday
- 10:00 – 18:00
- Wednesday
- 10:00 – 18:00
- Thursday
- 10:00 – 18:00
Jack Shainman Gallery is pleased to announce The Velocity of Change, the fourth solo exhibition of new paintings by Odili Donald Odita at 524 West 24th Street.
About
“The limits of language are the limits of my world.” -Ludwig Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, 1922.
Language, as a construct communally accepted, carries with it the burden of its applied history – that being the history of ideation and meaning. We have engaged these forces to create a greater connection of community within social groupings. Inadvertently and otherwise, we have also used language to terrorize, vilify, cannibalize, ostracize, persecute, and subjugate others who are not in the same space of authority – this done by those that hold power over language, through its force of command and condemnation.
The problem is language. It has always been my intention since the beginning to make paintings as a space that exists before language. Like the color-burst from a television screen before an image appears; or the open spark of thought before the idea; I want to conjure from a space that is free and construct-less, with the intention of possibility in mind.
I want to resist the binary; the faulty thinking that defines the experience of the Other in opposition to the “ground of whiteness.” Rather, it is to realize that whiteness is also a construct amongst all other identity constructions that exist within the world.
The resistance to color comes from those that want only structure without the immeasurability of light and space. I hope to engage the intrinsic power of color in its ability to escape the definitions of language that limit and paralyze.
It becomes increasingly important to recognize the power of inquiry and imagination as time flattens from remote information now edging closer to our fingertips, while thoughts filter through on auto-correct.
My Father told me when he was little he learned to cook with his Grandmother. Everyday, they spread flour on the counter and made a drawing in it as a ritual before cooking. This was done with respect to the process of cooking in each new day. I wish to engage my painting with this sentiment in mind in order to renew the space of intention, action and the imagination, again and again.
-Odili Donald Odita, Philadelphia, 2015
