December 2003

Rift

American (born Nigeria), 1966

Through his precise use of form and color, Odili Donald Odita challenges the presupposed neutrality of abstract art. Inspired by West African textile patterns and twentieth-century geometric abstraction, the artist combines both influences equally in order to construct a sophisticated and rhythmic image. Both its title and compositional zigzagging break down the center of the painting, underscoring its distance from Modernism while emphasizing the cultural and semantic associations carried by the word rift. By stacking these angled, crisp planes on top of each other, Odita simultaneously critiques the colonial undertones present in Western modernity while destabilizing traditional notions of the sublime.