Woody De Othello: The Emotion of Everyday Objects
The sculptor's oversized and uncanny water faucets take on new meaning in the era of climate change and pandemic anxiety
The sculptor's oversized and uncanny water faucets take on new meaning in the era of climate change and pandemic anxiety
We talk to California-based artist Woody De Othello (b. 1991, Miami), presenting with Jessica Silverman and Karma at Frieze Los Angeles.
Presented outside the fair as part of Frieze Projects, Fountain features water spouts and tap handles, twisted and knotted into a non-functional object that dwarfs the viewer in scale. While a regular tap channels a thin stream of water, Othello’s colossal sculpture implies the bodily threat of a menacing burst.
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.”
He was included in the 33rd Ljublijana Biennial of Graphic Arts in Ljublijana, Slovenia. In 2019- 2020, Othello was the subject of a one-person exhibition at the San Jose Museum of Art, California. His work is represented in the collections of the Institute of Contemporary Art, Miami; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco; MAXXI – National Museum of 21st Century Art, Rome; San Jose Museum of Art, San Jose, California; Baltimore Museum of Art, Baltimore, MD; Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh; Renwick Gallery, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington D.C.; Seattle Art Museum, Seattle; Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles; and the Rennie Collection, Vancouver, British Columbia.
See Fountain as part of the Frieze Projects program at Frieze Los Angeles outside the Beverly Hilton today; and explore Othello's works online at Frieze Viewing Room.
