Odili Donald Odita Nigerian-American, b. 1966

Berggruen Gallery is proud to present Abstract Perspectives, a group exhibition that highlights underrepresented voices in the world of contemporary abstract art. Abstract Perspectives will be on view from January 11th through February 29th, 2024. The gallery will host an opening reception on Thursday, January 11th from 5:00 to 7:00 pm. This curated collection furthers abstract artwork as a vital means of expression and social commentary beyond representational or stylized subject matter. While the artworks vary widely in size, media, and style, the entire show celebrates abstract art as a resistant break from convention, continually stretching the boundaries of visual language and aesthetics.

The exhibition will feature work by the following artists:

Diana al-Hadid
Tauba Auerbach
Radcliffe Bailey
Sarah Blaustein
Cecily Brown
Sarah Crowner
Heather Day
Clare Kirkconnell
Anna Kunz
Liza Lou
Julie Mehretu
Beatriz Milhazes
Odili Donald Odita

Abstract Perspectives, January 11 – February 29, 2024. On view at 10 Hawthorne Street, San Francisco, CA 94105. Images and previews are available upon request. For all inquiries, please contact the gallery by phone at (415) 781-4629 or by email at info@berggruen.com.

Berggruen Gallery is proud to announce Serial Imagery: Portfolios & Prints in Sets, an exhibition of etchings and intaglios, pochoirs, lithographs, screenprints, and woodblock prints. Serial Imagery: Portfolios & Prints in Sets will be on view from June 15 through July 22, 2023. The gallery will host an opening reception on Thursday, June 15, from 5:00 to 7:00 pm.

Throughout history, artists have created work in series, producing collections of images, repetitive forms, and cohesive graphic languages. In the last century, the practice of creating serial prints witnessed an extraordinary surge as visionaries from the conceptual and pop art movements embraced the sequential format, propelling it to newfound prominence and cultural relevancy. This exhibition will explore the compelling methodologies in which artists employ printmaking techniques to communicate unconventional concepts and push the boundaries of their chosen medium. Whether it involves utilizing multiple prints to convey a progressive narrative or extending the subject across multiple sheets, this presentation delves into the possibilities of sequential printmaking.

The artworks showcased in Serial Imagery: Portfolios & Prints in Sets were created with a diverse range of techniques and hybrid processes, including pochoir, etching and intaglio, lithography, screenprinting, and woodcut. The exhibition is grounded by the complete sets of Henri Matisse’s groundbreaking Jazz from 1947, a portfolio of twenty colorful pochoirs from the artist’s cut-out series, and Wayne Thiebaud’s canonical Delights from 1964, a suite of seventeen intimate etchings of confections and foods. Serial Imagery presents an array of contemporary approaches to serial production, demonstrating how seminal artists engaged and experimented with the tradition of printmaking. It includes works by:

Nina Chanel Abney
Brice Marden
Odili Donald Odita
Polly Apfelbaum
Henri Matisse
Kiki Smith
John Baldessari
Julie Mehretu
Wayne Thiebaud
Charles Gaines
Robert Motherwell
Ellsworth Kelly
Terry Winters

Artist Nina Chanel Abney's CREW displays sentimental portraits of friends and fellow creatives, employing bold shapes and vibrant hues to create iconic images that celebrate the significance of collective support. In Heart and Soul, a portfolio of nine woodblock prints, Polly Apfelbaum ventures beyond her customary use of primary and secondary colors, delving into freshly imagined color combinations to create modernist heart-shaped design patterns. In Eight Soups, John Baldessari utilizes serial repetition to play with the iconic imagery of Henri Matisse’s 1912 painting, Goldfish and Sculpture, together with a nod to Andy Warhol’s ubiquitous soup can series, creating a vibrant series of eight screenprints. Serial Imagery presents a diverse range of contemporary approaches to serial print production. Whether the focus is experimenting with shifting chromatic pairings, expanding upon a conceptual narrative, or subverting historical iconography, these portfolio and print sets denote an interest in transcending disciplinary boundaries imposed by the notion of singularity.

Additionally, the exhibition celebrates the important contribution of fine printing presses and publishers in the process of creating and distributing serial prints. Each of these presses played a critical role in the serialization of the artist’s vision, from planning to execution. Prints in the exhibition were created at Crown Point Press, San Francisco; Durham Press, Durham, PA; Gemini G.E.L., Los Angeles; Paulson Fontaine Press, Berkeley; and Tériade, Paris; among others.

Serial Imagery: Portfolios & Prints in Sets, June 15 – July 22, 2023. On view at 10 Hawthorne Street, San Francisco, CA 94105. Images and preview are available upon request. For all inquiries, please contact the gallery by phone at (415) 781-4629 or by email at info@berggruen.com.

Berggruen Gallery is pleased to present Odili Donald Odita: Climate Change, an exhibition of recent paintings by Nigerian American artist Odili Donald Odita. This show marks Odita’s first solo exhibition with the gallery. The show will be on view from October 14 through November 13, 2021. The gallery will host a reception for the artist on Thursday, October 14, from 5:00 to 7:00 pm.

Odili Donald Odita is an abstract painter who employs shape and color to explore personal, historical, and socio-political landscapes. Born in Enugu, Nigeria, and raised in Columbus, Ohio, the artist is inspired by his cultural identities and the contrasts they present. He is well known for his large-scale works that interlock complex geometries with distinct and vibrant colors. Odita weaves together formal expressions rooted in Modernism and African textile patterning to questions of personal identity and societal meaning-making. Through the freedom of abstraction, Odita creates a visual language to explore the myriad of complexities the world faces today.

Odita’s forms go beyond the predictable. The striking diagonals and slants that bisect his canvases break through classic abstract perspectives and create their own distinct, visual landscapes. The artist often establishes balance through a strong central dividing line, then subtly disrupts any steadiness by making edged and unexpected spaces. For Climate Change, Odita directs his attention towards the imminent natural tensions our world faces today and recognizes a conversation of extremes and dualities that extends beyond weather patterns. In his eponymous painting Climate Change, he expresses volatility through a series of uneven vertical patterning and jagged lines that push beyond the canvas. The bold color segments simultaneously meet and diverge, creating a perspectival painting that is both in motion and static. Noticeably striking, the painting forebodes a sense of complexity, threat, and longing for hope and creates a strong visual space worthy of critical contemplation.

For Odita, color is an agent for the senses. He is intuitive in his color selections and chooses them carefully, with design, to express thought and emotion. The artist is acutely aware of physiological responses associated with different hues and thinks critically about the assumed associations a color may hold. With this awareness, Odita deliberately hand mixes his paints and notes, “I cannot make a color twice – it can only appear to be the same – this is important to me because it highlights the specificity of differences that exist in the world of people and things.’’ In Climate Change, Odita chose colors that contain both lightness and darkness within them, expressing the nuances of light present in every tone.

In addition to Odita’s striking canvas works, Climate Change exhibits the artist’s newer practice of using wood-panel supports for his paintings, rather than exclusively canvas. Odita questions how materials impact our perceptions of what is natural and what is created. The triangular shapes in The Secret blend with the wood paneling surface, leveling the acrylic with the natural grain. In Burning, Odita keenly elevates the extremes of the burnt orange color by painting on wood panel, and placing the subject matter of the work in dialogue with its materiality. Throughout Climate Change, the artist employs abstraction to unpack binary thinking and understand the interconnectedness of our state of being. Odita’s practice works within complexity, bridging materials and temperaments to create room for new expanses to arise.

Odita was born in Enugu, Nigeria in 1966. He earned his Bachelor of Arts with Distinction from Ohio State University in 1988 and his Masters of Fine Arts from Bennington College in 1990. Odita has exhibited widely in museums and institutions, both nationally and internationally, including Savannah College of Art and Design; Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, San Francisco; Contemporary Arts Museum, Houston; Institute of Contemporary Art, Philadelphia; Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University, Durham, NC; Ulrich Museum of Art, Wichita; Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Bentonville, AK, and Princeton University Art Museum, NJ. His installations are on view throughout the country and in 2007, his installation Give Me Shelter was featured prominently in the 52nd Venice Biennale exhibition Think with the Senses, Feel with the Mind curated by Robert Storr. His work belongs to numerous museum collections, including the Baltimore Museum of Art, the Pérez Art Museum, Miami, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, and the Studio Museum in Harlem. Odita lives and works in Philadelphia.

Odili Donald Odita: Climate Change, October 14 – November 13, 2021. On view at 10 Hawthorne Street, San Francisco, CA 94105. Images and previews are available upon request. For all inquiries, please contact the gallery by phone (415) 781-4629 or by email info@berggruen.com.

Berggruen Gallery is pleased to announce the opening of an exhibition space in East Hampton for the 2021 summer season. The gallery space is located in the heart of East Hampton Village at 55 Main Street. Berggruen Gallery’s special "pop-up" will be on view May 14 — September 30, 2021. Hours: Monday-Wednesday, by appointment; Thursday-Sunday, 11am-5pm.

John Berggruen first opened his eponymous gallery in downtown San Francisco in the spring of 1970. Five decades later, the gallery has executed more than 800 major exhibitions, participated in significant domestic and international art fairs such as Art Basel Miami Beach, and exhibited at the Art Dealer's Association of America's The Art Show, since the fair's inception, for the past 33 years. A cornerstone of the West Coast art world, Berggruen Gallery is proud to deepen our roots on both coasts of the country with this exciting East Coast venture.

Berggruen Gallery will present a curated selection of Modern and Contemporary paintings, sculptures, and limited-edition prints. The presentation will reflect the gallery’s ongoing dedication to juxtaposing historical works with those from the contemporary canon. The gallery will feature a dynamic and diverse group of internationally-acclaimed artists, including renowned Post-War American painters like Richard Diebenkorn, Helen Frankenthaler, and Wayne Thiebaud, as well as many important contemporary artists artists such as Diana Al-Hadid, John Currin, Beatriz Milhazes, Odili Donald Odita, and Jonas Wood. Berggruen Gallery is excited to present a unique breadth of work—transcending subject matter, composition, medium, and technique—for the summer of 2021 in East Hampton.

Artists
Diana Al-Hadid | John Alexander | Stephan Balkenhol | Christopher Brown | Bruce Cohen
Michael Craig-Martin | John Currin | Richard Diebenkorn | Helen Frankenthaler
Isca Greenfield-Sanders | Stephen Hannock | Jasper Johns | Paul Kremer | Alicia McCarthy
Tom McKinley | Beatriz Milhazes | Odili Donald Odita | David Park | Joel Shapiro
Wayne Thiebaud | Stanley Whitney | Lucy Williams | Donald Roller Wilson | Jonas Wood

Berggruen Gallery is pleased to present Contemporary Paintings, an extensive exploration of light, color, and composition through the medium of paint. This exhibition will be on view June 22 - August 2020. You can view a selection of paintings from the exhibition through our ADAA viewing room here, or view the exhibition in person by scheduling an appointment here. For a more interactive view of the exhibition, we invite you to visit our virtual viewing room here.

From an exquisite example of Sean Scully’s Wall of Light series to the colorful environments of local, Bay Area painters Muzae Sesay and Jenny Sharaf, Contemporary Paintings abounds with saturated hues, graphic geometries, and varying techniques. Whether it be whimsical abstraction or meticulous realism, the paintings juxtapose one another to open dialogues regarding how artists render their surrounding world. The exhibition inaugurates the gallery’s reopening and summer programming, reflecting Berggruen Gallery's ongoing dedication to presenting exhibitions that bring together works from the contemporary canon and of historical significance. Furthermore, the show features a dynamic and diverse group of artists from several different countries, from the United States to South Korea to the United Kingdom, including works by:

Enrique Martinez Celaya
Mary Corse
Sarah Crowner
Austin Eddy
Matthew Feyld
Mark Fox
Shara Hughes
Matthew Day Jackson
Minku Kim
Paul Kremer
Des Lawrence
Julian Lethbridge
Sam Messenger
Odili Donald Odita
Clare Rojas
Sean Scully
Muzae Sesay
Jenny Sharaf

Contemporary Paintings, June 22 – August, 2020. On view by appointment only at 10 Hawthorne Street, San Francisco, CA 94105. To schedule an appointment, please click here. Images and preview are available upon request. For all inquiries please contact the gallery by phone (415) 781-4629 or by email info@berggruen.com.

Berggruen Gallery is pleased to present Major Contemporary Works, an exhibition of paintings, drawings, and sculptures by important contemporary artists. This show will be on view May 16 - July 6, 2019.

Tauba Auerbach | Cecily Brown | Christo | Tony Cragg | Sarah Crowner | John Currin | Mark di Suvero
Spencer Finch | Günther Förg | Danny Fox | Michelle Grabner | Shara Hughes | William Kentridge
Alicia McCarthy | Beatriz Milhazes | Sarah Morris | Odili Donald Odita | Tom Otterness
Martin Puryear | Joel Shapiro | Jenny Sharaf | Kiki Smith | Lucy Williams


Major Contemporary Works, May 16 - July 6, 2019. On view at 10 Hawthorne Street, San Francisco, CA 94105. Images and preview are available upon request. For all inquiries, please contact the gallery by phone (415) 781-4629 or by email info@berggruen.com.