Woody De Othello, ‘seeing both sides’, 2024
The artist uses Dogon cosmology to examine balance in a work in this year’s free display in The Regent’s Park
The artist uses Dogon cosmology to examine balance in a work in this year’s free display in The Regent’s Park
Woody De Othello, seeing both sides, 2024
Patinated bronze. Presented by Jessica Silverman, Stephen Friedman Gallery and Karma
About the Work
seeing both sides explores what exists at the intersection of choice and how we can move with change. The seven-foot-tall patinated bronze figure is doubled, with multiple limbs extending in all four directions. The bottom half has feet pointing outwards, while the raised arms and hands all point inwards, holding up the severed head. The figure exists at an axis of directionality, the intersection of divinity and humanity.
In making the work, Othello was inspired by other objects with an axis: compasses, crosses and sundials, as well Dogon sculptures which often exhibit bilateral symmetry. The work looks closer at Dogon cosmology and beliefs which emphasize that our bodies are vessels and containers for spirituality, alignment and balance. They believed in complementary opposites, and the connection between earth, the stars and the planets. Within the cosmology, the horizontal axis is this realm, earth. It is a plane of reality, of existence. It's what society is telling us we need to be in order to succeed. The vertical axis is a direct line to our higher self and the energy that is propelling us into the future. Within the figure of seeing both sides, both realms coexist and move in dialogue.
About the Artist
Woody De Othello (b. 1991 Miami; lives and works in Oakland, California, USA) enquires into the nature of everyday life through spiritualism and traditions. His sculptures, paintings and installations imagine a world in which the things that populate our domestic lives metamorphize into syncretic, humanoid objects.
Othello has exhibited widely in group exhibitions at the Museum of Arts and Design, New York; SFMOMA, San Francisco; Hayward Gallery, London; The Met, New York; Smithsonian American Art Museum and Renwick Gallery, Washington DC; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Fabric Workshop, Philadelphia; FRONT International: Cleveland Triennial; 33rd Ljubljana Biennial; and Center for Craft in Asheville, among others. Large-scale public art commissions include San Francisco International Airport; de Young, Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco; and Cityline, Sunnyvale.
His work is in the permanent collections of the Whitney Museum of American Art; Pérez Art Museum Miami; ICA, Miami; SFMOMA, San Francisco; Seattle Art Museum; LACMA, Los Angeles; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh; San José Museum of Art; John Michael Kohler Arts Center, Sheboygan; and MAXXI National Museum of 21st Century Art, Rome, and many more.
Frieze Sculpture is in The Regent’s Park, 18 September – 27 October 2024. No booking required, free to all.
Further Information
Frieze Sculpture runs alongside Frieze London and Frieze Masters, 9 – 13 October.
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Main image: Woody De Othello, Fountain, 2021. Bronze and lacquer topcoat over patina, 297.2 x 271.8 x 137.2 cm. Courtesy of the artist, Jessica Silverman (San Francisco), Karma (New York) and Stephen Friedman (London)
