A Conversation: Woody De Othello & Arlene Shechet
Wednesday, November 2, 2022, 5pm
on Zoom
On the occasion of Woody De Othello, Maybe tomorrow Karma is pleased to invite you to a conversation to celebrate the exhibition. Please join artists Woody De Othello and Arlene Shechet as they discuss their influences and wide-ranging artistic practices.
Read more and register HERE
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Woody De Othello, Won't Tell, 2018, Ceramic, glaze, acrylic paint, resin, 53 1⁄2 × 19 × 19 Inches (Overall)
Woody De Othello in Conversation
at the Hayward Gallery, London
Wednesday October 26, 2022 at 7 pm
Hayward Gallery, Southbank Centre
Belvedere Rd, London
SE1 8XX, United Kingdom
As Hayward Gallery exhibition Strange Clay: Ceramics in Contemporary Art opens, featured artist Woody De Othello gives us an insight into his work in a free talk.
Read more and register HERE
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Face jug, by an unrecorded potter, attributed to Miles Mill Pottery (1867–85), Old Edgefield District, South Carolina, alkaline-glazed stoneware with kaolin glaze.
Woody De Othello in Hear Me Now: The Black Potters of Old Edgefield, South Carolina
at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
September 9, 2022–February 5, 2023
The Metropolitan Museum of Art
1000 Fifth Avenue
New York, NY 10028
Focusing on the work of African American potters in the 19th-century American South—in dialogue with contemporary artistic responses—the exhibition presents approximately 50 ceramic objects from Old Edgefield District, South Carolina, a center of stoneware production in the decades before the Civil War. Hear Me Now will include monumental storage jars by enslaved and literate potter and poet David Drake alongside rare examples of the region’s utilitarian wares, as well as enigmatic face vessels whose makers were unrecorded. Considered through the lens of current scholarship in the fields of history, literature, anthropology, material culture, diaspora, and African American studies, these 19th-century vessels testify to the lived experiences, artistic agency, and material knowledge of enslaved peoples.
Read more HERE
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Woody De Othello, Won't Tell, 2018, Ceramic, glaze, acrylic paint, resin, 53 1⁄2 × 19 × 19 Inches (Overall)
Woody De Othello in Strange Clay: Ceramics in Contemporary Art
at Hayward Gallery, London
October 26—January 8, 2022
Hayward Gallery, Southbank Centre, Belvedere Rd
London SE1 8XX, United Kingdom
Featuring 23 international artists working across recent decades, the exhibition examines the plasticity and the possibilities of ceramics.
The artworks on show encompass fantastical creatures and uncanny representations of the everyday, as well as ranging from small abstract works to large-scale installations that take the medium beyond the kiln.
Strange Clay does not present a comprehensive survey of artists who work with ceramics today – instead the exhibition explores the possibilities of thinking through making.
Read more HERE
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Fountain, 2021 Frieze LA 2022, installation view, Photo by Casey Kelbaugh. Courtesy of Casey Kelbaugh/Frieze.
Frieze Los Angeles 2022
February 17-20, 2022
Made uncanny by enlargement, distortion, and anthropomorphism, Woody De Othello’s reinventions of common household articles consider the psychological relationship between body and object. His works embrace anxiety and vulnerability, and register how devices, through their use, can carry traces of human weariness and activity. Fountain features water spouts and tap handles, twisted and knotted into a non-functional object that dwarfs the viewer in scale. While the reference object channels a thin stream of water, Othello’s colossal sculpture implies the bodily threat of a menacing burst. Fountain unsettles conventions of physicality, re-evaluating the subject’s purpose and meaning through its idiosyncratic rendering. As Othello states, his work is “an attempt to have a more bodily experience in relation to the objects. In my perspective, there’s this thing with scale that makes you more aware of yourself. It’s a heightened experience. The size, in conjunction with this droopiness, creates tension—a sense of precarity. There’s a lot of anxious buildup when constructing some of the objects.”
Woody De Othello, Fountain, 2021, bronze, 117 × 107 × 54 inches; 297 × 272 × 137 cm, Edition 3 of 3, 2AP. Courtesy the artist and Karma, New York and Jessica Silverman.
View Woody De Othello’s artist page HERE
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Woody De Othello’s “Looking Down,” 2019, ceramic, glaze, vinyl and polyester fiber. Credit: Woody De Othello, Jessica Silverman Gallery and Karma
Woody De Othello in Whitney Biennial 2022: Quiet as It’s Kept
at the Whitney Museum of American Art
April 6, 2022 – September 5, 2022
99 Gansevoort Street
New York, NY 10014
Whitney Biennial 2022: Quiet as It’s Kept is co-organized by David Breslin, DeMartini Family Curator and Director of Curatorial Initiatives, and Adrienne Edwards, Engell Speyer Family Curator and Director of Curatorial Affairs, with Gabriel Almeida Baroja, Curatorial Project Assistant, and Margaret Kross, former Senior Curatorial Assistant.
Read more HERE
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Cool Composition, 2019, painted bronze, 93 × 92 × 32 inches; 236.22 × 233.62 × 81.28 cm, installation view
Shapeshifters: In conversation with Bay Area artists Masako Miki and Woody de Othello
FOG Art+Design, San Francisco
January 23, 2022 at 1pm
Moderated by Natasha Boas, International Curator, Ph.D
East Bay-based artists Woody De Othello (represented by Jessica Silverman, San Francisco and Karma, New York) and Masako Miki (represented by CULT Aimee Friberg Exhibitions, San Francisco and RYAN LEE, New York) both create semi- abstract, sculptural forms in materials that range from felt to ceramic to glazed bronze, inspired by everyday domestic objects. De Othello culls inspiration from his own Haitian ancestry and the supernatural objects of Voodoo folklore, while Miki draws from the Shinto and Buddhist traditions and the Japanese folk belief in yōkai (shapeshifters). Both artists will present their work of boundary bending forms and discuss the philosophies and new mythologies that shape them in conversation with San Francisco-based international independent curator, Dr. Natasha Boas.
Read more HERE
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Woody De Othello, Freeflow, 2021, ceramic and glaze. Courtesy of the artist and Jessica Silverman, San Francisco. Photo: John Wilson White.
Woody De Othello: Hope Omens
September 26, 2021–September 25, 2022
John Michael Kohler Arts Center
608 New York Ave
Sheboygan, WI 53081
Oakland ceramicist Woody De Othello is best known for his large-scale anthropomorphic figures, which are often humorous portrayals of domestic objects. For Hope Omens, he will present an entirely new body of work.
Many of the sculptures were produced using molds that Othello created during his Arts/Industry Pottery residency at the Kohler Co. factory in early 2020. While he was in residence, the world outside the factory began to shift with the beginning of the pandemic. The residency was cut short by several weeks and forced Othello to bring home some of the molds to continue his work. Othello draws on African Nkisii, or objects that are believed to be invested with spiritual protection and energy. Breath and breathing are ideas often expressed in Othello’s vessel-like forms covered in mouths. These concepts, and the power to deprive people of their breath and their ability to breathe, are now more highly charged. In addition, many of his new works feature both ears and mouths, offering meditations on listening, hearing, and being present.
A new sound piece by Oakland, California musician Cheflee will accompany Othello’s sculptures. Made in response to the work in the exhibition, the ambient composition is designed to subtly guide the viewer through the space, creating an immersive environment. Some of the vessels will emanate sound from within, as if imbued with a spirit.
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vessel for feelings of shame and guilt, 2019. Ceramic and glaze, 66 × 22 × 20 inches overall; vessel: 24 × 22 × 16 inches; base: 42 × 20 × 20 inches. Image courtesy of Jessica Silverman Gallery.
Woody De Othello: Breathing Room
November 1, 2019–April 5, 2020
San Jose Museum of Art
110 South Market Street
San José, CA 95113
sjmusart.org
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Time, Turn, and Light, 2019. Collection of the City and County of San Francisco. Photo courtesy of San Francisco Arts Commission by Ethan Kaplan Photography.
Woody De Othello at San Francisco International Airport
Opened on February 6, 2019 (permanent installation)
Public Observational Deck
San Francisco, CA 94128
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Woody De Othello.
Woody De Othello in “Blow Up” at Friedman Benda
Curated by Felix Burrichter
January 10 – February 16, 2019
Friedman Benda
515 West 26th Street
New York, NY 10001
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