Odili Donald Odita

Edited & Designed by Ian Sternthal Sternthal Books is proud to present ‘Odili Donald Odita’ – a visually enticing survey that spans over twenty years of Odili Donald Odita’s exciting career. Odili’s vibrant abstract paintings blur the borderlines of American, African, and Western European traditions of abstract paintings, which according to Rob Storr, has led him to “rejuvenate abstract painting 100 years after its invention – and in the process create a culturally syncretic idiom that is all his own.” The book will emphasize the political and aesthetic importance of Odili’s visually astounding paintings and installations by presenting them alongside a trove of accompanying visual materials – including images from photographic archives he has collected, drawings, installations, and geometric studies. Odili Donald Odita is a hard cover comprehensive monograph of the artist’s work – spanning from his early mixed media collages from the early 1990’s – to his latest three dimensional painting installations and more. Odili’s vibrant abstract paintings blur the borderlines of American, African, and Western European traditions, which according to Rob Storr, has led him to “rejuvenate abstract painting 100 years after its invention – and in the process create a culturally syncretic idiom that is all his own.” The book’s discreet black and white cover betrays a striking panoply of colors, papers, and formats that make up the book’s 400+ pages. Mixing and layering drawings, geometric studies, paintings, installations, and texts creates momentary connections between different images – echoing Odita’s thirty year artistic pursuit of fusing disparate and separate colors into spiritually unified spaces. Inspired both by African and American Design, the book mixes his paintings with a trove of materials from the ‘Black Album’, a collection of ads, photographs, and media clippings related to race and Black American culture that he has been collecting for years. This intermixing contextualizes Odita’s abstract expressionism within a political context of struggle, race, and diaspora, resulting in a timely meditation on race in America. The curatorial essays were laid out on spreads from Ebony Magazine, and while the images and captions were preserved,  the original texts were erased and replaced with new ones, with Odili’s work appearing on smaller shiny papers reminiscent of the detachable mail in subscription advertisements in magazines from the 80’s and 90’s. Texts by Stamatina Gregory, Gregory Volk, and Ugochukwu-Smooth Nzewi, and a conversation between Odili and Ian Sternthal. HardBound sewn signatures Silkscreen on cloth 22,9 x 30.5 mm, 408 Pages