THIRD DEGREE OF SEPARATION. By Odila Donald Odita. At The Stevenson Gallery, Woodstock, until April 11. DANNY SHORKEND reviews.
SINCE Wassily Kandinsky in the early 20th century first saw in his upside down painting its great potential as art, the idea and practice of abstract art was set in motion. In theory, theorists such as Clement Greenberg, Richard Fry and Clive Bell, as well as the writings of Ad Reinhardt’s art-as-art polemic, argued for a pure realm of art without references or representations of the external world.
This draws historically from Immanuel Kant’s meditations on aesthetics where he argues that pure form and disinterested contemplation could be sought through art. In practice, abstract expressionism, supremistism, op art, minimalism and hard-edge abstraction confirmed abstract painting as very much integral to the institution of art. Bearing this in mind, this work at Stevenson is in good company.
Barnett Newman, whose famous “zip” paintings said that “there is no good painting about nothing”, rejecting pure formalism signalled that abstract art is not simply about “pure” aesthetic presence and delight or visual music. Odita’s work aims to be a colour meditation, but also about the binary and space that appears to exist between the Western world and Africa, between the so-called third world and the first world. (He was born in Nigeria, but lives and works in the US).
In this respect the beautiful colour shapes are not simply forms without meaning or reference.
The fragmented, disjointed, filtering “light” (colour) is an abstract, dare I say, scientific, concern with a fractured, optical dance that suggests that there is a complexity between shifting positions between first and third world relationships, whether philosophical, political or economic.
I wonder however, without the artists’ stated intention to visually depict this “play”/struggle, whether the viewer would decode the work as such. On a certain level the paintings are a kind of synesthesia – musical rhythm and pattern that simply delights the eye on an aesthetic level without reference to other institutional worlds.
The fact that the colours do not blend and merge into one another, assuming one does interpret the work as the “space and colour” boundaries between the West and Africa, suggests that resolving the tension and ambiguities between cultures is not forthcoming.
Rather, given the play of differences – subtle colour changes and nuances – there a certain complexity, lack of resolution and sharpness. Yet, there is hope in the recurring triangular and diamond theme/shape suggesting the interpretation of the diamond as symbol, namely that the dross of earthiness, heaviness and a lack of clarity and vision can be overcome.
I was also intrigued by the methodical execution and evenly applied paint. In an overly technicist age, perhaps this precludes a certain romantic, Dionysian energy in favour of the scientific and “reasonable”. I would caution against such an approach as it is in the tension and dialectic between logic and emotions, between deductive logic and intuition, between optical presence and sublime formlessness that may result in balance and integration.
In this respect, while the “optical presence” is quite simply pleasurable on the eye, its is unclear whether its energy and “hardness” allows for a quality of softness, empathic and affective dimensions.
This reading is confirmed by the artist’s sketches on show – interesting in terms of his process, but frighteningly cold and reductive. Perhaps a more “African approach” – however difficult that may be to define – needs to assert itself over the intensely technological, abstract and profit-driven West. However there is no strict binary as an Africa considered as “innocent”, “dark” and tribal is as much driven by profit and power, embroiled as its is in “Western values”.
The dance and movement of colour is at the same time repelled by the lack of the artists’ visceral touch and mark making.
This dichotomy reflects the extra-aesthetic references in the tension that exists between spaces, between self and other and within the self, namely whether one can maintain a semblance of order and integration in an intensely commercial, hyper and overly technicist society which potentially homo-genises differences between individuals and social groups.
The global village is more precisely: the global construction.
Odita has created large murals including Heavens Gate(2012) at the Savannah College of Art and Design, Georgia; Infinite Horizons(2013) at Goethe C Young US Courthouse and Federal Building in Florida; Possible Worlds(2014) at PS340M in NY City; and Bridge(2014) at the Moss Art Centre for the Arts, Virginia Tech.
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