Gravity’s Rainbow

Odili Donald Odita

2001

Odili Donald Odita was born in Nigeria and grew up in the suburbs of Columbus, Ohio. Abstract painting affords Odita an ideal means with which to reference his dual African and American heritage. The vectoring geometry of Gravity’s Rainbow recalls hard-edge painting practiced by Kenneth Noland and Gene Davis in the 1960s. Unlike the purely formalist strategy of these artists, Odita invests his work with implied narratives, suggesting landscapes or, perhaps, digital spaces. His palette invokes African textiles and the distinct earth tones of that continent. Odita is a postmodernist who consciously combines lineages. By titling his painting after Thomas Pynchon’s 1973 novel Gravity’s Rainbow, Odita signals his interest in conjuring a hybrid identity for abstract painting.

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Japanese Children's Day Carp, Paguate Village, Uranium Tailings, Laguna Pueblo Reservation, New Mexico, Patrick Nagatani, Cibacolor print
Untitled (Truck), Jimmy Lee Sudduth, paint and mud on wood board
Painted linen canvas, bordered by blue canvas. Kente accents on the top and bottom borders and white canvas pictured with women’s stocking-ed legs accent the left and right borders. There is also a smaller yellow canvas border at the top. Each corner of the painting’s image is anchored by hands that are encased in circular forms with web-like backgrounds. The painting’s image is also divided into three sections. The left section has a black background, created by broad, quick brush strokes. The background also includes cut pieces of Kente cloth, string, and other printed fabric. The faceless, ghost-like figure wears a black hat and white gloves. This figure also holds a paint brush in its right hand. Primarily the figure holds a picture of a bronze female nude. The central section’s background is comprised of an essay on Greek art, with the lettering faded out in areas closest to the central figure’s body. The figure in this portion of the painting is a young black woman, wrapped in Kente cloth at the waist, but whose breasts are exposed. She wears a simple necklace, as well as rings, bracelets, and head kerchief. Her body is visually dissected at the neck, pelvis, and knees by painted portions of a yellow measuring tape. Next to her figure in the center of the painting itself is half of a circular textile – words read: EN NAWTORO and NON WATTA KO BURK. This particular piece also includes imagery of an African woman with her child on her back, throwing a ceramic bowl. The right side of the painting contains the third and last figure. Set upon a yellow background composed of yellow, black, blue, and red paints applied in quick, broad, scribbled brush strokes and drip patterns. The figure itself is a picture of the 5th century Greek Kritios Boy. His form is delineated by a heavy blue outline and Amos also exaggerated the figure’s curly hair. The bottom right side of the painting is comprised of a red-orange background, also created by busy, broad brush and drip patterns. The painting’s title is rendered in yellow canvas, centered within the blue canvas border at the bottom of the piece.
Large, sculptural installation piece comprised of a variety of found objects that references those individuals who marched alongside Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. in Birmingham in 1963, in the form of two figures, one on each side made of miscellaneous metal parts and with tire torsos, in each "hand" hangs old clothing and shoes, a cross, from the "head" of one extends an American flag, in the center is a group of objects that refer to conflict during the Civil Rights Movement in Birmingham, including plastic dogs, boots, guns, a police baton, and chains attached to a metal grate, above this are two old Alabama license plates and a central BEWARE OF THE DOG sign, on the ground in front of the piece is a red fireman's hat and a black police helmet along with a recumbent plastic dog and pair of rubber boots with a machine gun inside.