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.
