Third Space

Odili Donald Odita's large-scale abstract wall paintings operate at the intersection of Western modernism and African culture. 'Third Space', a symphony of irregularly shaped, fractured planes in 115 shades of housepaint, takes full advantage of the ICA Ramp's soaring, sloping architecture. Borrowing strategies of destabilized perception from Op art — a tradition condemned by formalist criticism — and adding narrative and multicultural inflection, Odita both embraces and critiques the modernist tradition. His vast, animated expanses of fragmented, rhythmic planes — equally informed by television test band patterns, African textiles, post-colonial discourses, sensory overload, and digital technology — speak to a contemporary experience of dislocation and decenteredness.