James Maurelle, Friday Night, 2021. wood, brass, adhesive, and sandpaper, 6.25 x 14 x 0.5 inches each. Photo by Karen Mauch.
Artist Talk with James Maurelle and Odili Donald Odita
Friday, October 8, 6-7pm ET
RSVP for Zoom link
Please join us for a conversation between artist James Maurelle and curator-mentor Odili Donald Odita in conjunction with Maurelle’s solo exhibition, On-Site. The exhibition consists of sculptures and prints crafted from materials such as wood, metal, and found objects that weld form and function with Black cultural histories. Through a formal engagement with a vernacular derived from Black American traditions of making and African woodworking traditions, the work celebrates methods of defiance and achievement in the face of oppressive systems and structures, speaking to what Odita refers to as “the poetics of Black people and the Black experience.” Maurelle and Odita will be available for questions following the conversation.
The event will be live-captioned as well as recorded, captioned, and posted to our website after the event. If you have additional access questions or needs, please contact info@cueartfoundation.org (ideally with at least 48 hours before the event) and we will do our best to accommodate you.
James Maurelle is an interdisciplinary artist—sculpture, video, photography, and sound art are his analog and digital primes. His work has been shown in solo and group exhibitions in New York, Minneapolis-Saint Paul, Austin, Philadelphia, New Orleans, Richmond, Cincinnati, and San Francisco. Maurelle received his BFA from the San Francisco Art Institute and his MFA from the University of Pennsylvania. He was a recipient of the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture Fellowship in 2015.
Odili Donald Odita (b. Enugu, Nigeria; lives and works in Philadelphia) is an abstract painter whose work explores color, both in the figurative historical context and in the sociopolitical sense. He is best known for his large-scale canvases with kaleidoscopic patterns and vibrant hues, which he uses to reflect the human condition. For Odita, color is at once a distinct phenomenon and a vehicle for mirroring the complexity of the world. He has presented exhibitions at the Philadelphia Museum of Art (2021); Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond (2020-21); Laumeier Sculpture Park, St. Louis (2020); Institute of Contemporary Art, Miami (2019-21); Nasher Museum of Art, Duke University, Durham (2015–17); Savannah College of Art and Design (2012); and the New Orleans Museum of Art (2011), among other institutions. Odita is represented by Jack Shainman Gallery, New York.