Woody De Othello

The San Francisco–based artist Woody De Othello (born 1991) finds inspiration for his paintings and ceramics by adapting a position of porousness to the things around him. Through his adroit interventions, everyday artifacts of the domestic—tables, chairs, television remotes, telephone receivers, lamps and air purifiers—are anthropomorphized in glazed ceramic, bronze, wood and glass. The result is often tubular, drooping and coated in vibrant reds, purples and magnetic blacks, imbued with the subterranean futurity of jazz.
Fittingly, this catalog, published following the eponymous solo exhibition in New York, is titled after jazz musician Grant Green’s 1971 tune. The new body of ceramic works in Maybe Tomorrow brim with spiritual charge; the domestic objects are treated as repositories of psychic significance. The catalog explores this thematic wellspring, along with other topics, in an essay by Jason R. Young, as well as in two conversations with the artist.

In the sculptures of Berkeley-based artist Woody De Othello (born 1991), everyday domestic artifacts—tables, chairs, television remotes, telephone receivers, lamps, air purifiers—are anthropomorphized in glazed ceramic, bronze, wood and glass. Othello’s scaled-up representations of these objects often slump over, overcome with gravity, as if exhausted by their own use. Informed by his own Haitian ancestry, Othello takes interest in the supernatural objects of Vodou folklore. Like the Vodou vessels, nkisi figures and other animist artifacts that inspire him, Othello’s ceramic characters come alive. “A form of contemporary nkisi, Othello’s vessels and misshapen objects seem to react to and hold the energies of the space they inhabit,” writes Lauren Dickens, “suggesting the power of pressures endured but not seen.” This comprehensive, fully illustrated volume explores Othello’s ceramic works from 2016 through 2020, and includes three new essays by Lauren Dickens, Mario Gooden and Ricky Swallow.