Richard Tuttle and Odili Donald Odita: Language and Pattern

Crown Point Press is pleased to present ‘Richard Tuttle and Odili Donald Odita: Language and Pattern,’ a two-person exhibition on view until October 30, 2026. Both artists use the visual elements of color, scale, line, pattern, and perception to explore how nonrepresentational forms can communicate—Tuttle through invented signs and intimate material gestures, and Odita through color, pattern, cultural memory, and political forces.

On view is Richard Tuttle’s portfolio ‘Type,’ 2003, consisting of 26 etchings that form an invented alphabet. Rather than representing letters, he explores sequence, signs, and communication. Tuttle is intrigued by the pursuit of new forms; in making an alphabet, he thinks beyond the recognizable letters. “One of my discoveries,” he says, is the “correspondence of letters and numbers.” Tuttle’s concept of an alphabet is essentially one of sequence. He began the project by thinking about process and material: the copper plate, the paper, and the tarlatan cloth used by the printers in the first stage of wiping an etching plate. In this series, Tuttle incorporated the cloth into the actual prints, using the chine colle process. He was searching, he said, for “a new plane of consciousness between the paper and the tarlatan.” Tuttle chose the title of the series ‘Type’ for the word’s association with printing, but also for its meaning as a model characterizing or foreshadowing other similar things. Tuttle has called the images in this new alphabet “playful.”

Odili Donald Odita uses the juxtaposition and repetition of color and geometry as elements to unify space in his paintings and wall installations. He mixes his own color palette, and tries not to use the same color more than once. Shapes are demarcated by straight lines, triangles are elongated and skewed, chevrons run tangentially across a color field. Odita has said, “For me, the abstract is not something that I can say is unreal … for me, abstraction is a means of getting to the real in the most direct way.”

Three of the four projects completed by Odilia Donald Odita in the spring of 2022 are included in the exhibition: ‘Bliss, Net, Black on Blue and White on Red (Burning).’ He said at the time that “I have been wanting to understand the spatial relationships that could be found within the structure of the selected patterns.” Odita used the same key plate for the prints ‘Net,’ ‘Black on Blue’ and ‘White on Red (Burning)’: vertical, syncopated lines were drawn using soft ground and printed in black, white, yellow, red, and blue. He used aquatint to create gem-like color fields of blue, magenta, red, and yellow for the backgrounds of ‘Bliss’ and ‘Black on Blue and White on Red (Burning).’ Odita said in a recent conversation, “Colors refer to literary and aesthetic suggestions of Black bodies and people of color (purple, blue, and deep red).”

Odili Donald Odita (b. 1966 Engu, Nigeria) is an abstract painter who lives and works in Philadelphia, PA. In October, 2022, he created fifteen etchings in the Crown Point etching studio over a two-week period.

Odili Donald Odita is currently represented by David Kordansky Gallery, Los Angeles; and by Michael Stevenson Gallery, in Cape Town, South Africa. Since the early 2000s he has lived in Philadelphia and is Professor of Painting and Drawing at Tyler School of Art, Temple University. In 2007 he received the Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation Grant and in 2022 he was awarded a Pew Fellowship in the Arts. His work has been displayed internationally in both solo and group exhibitions, and is in the collections of the Baltimore Museum of Art; Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, D.C.; Pérez Art Museum, Miami; Philadelphia Museum of Art; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; and the Studio Museum, Harlem, among others. Large wall installations have been shown at the 52nd Venice Biennale; the Philadelphia Museum of Art; and Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, San Francisco.

Richard Tuttle (b. 1941, Rahway, New Jersey) is a sculptor who lives and works in Maine and New Mexico. Tuttle made his first prints, woodcuts, as part of an artist’s book in 1965. Since then, he has created prints and artist’s books continuously throughout his career. Tuttle made his first print with Crown Point Press through their woodblock programs in China and Japan, titled ‘Transasian’ (1993). Over the following twelve years, he created ten print projects at Crown Point Press, eight of which are presented in portfolios.

Tuttle’s work is in many museum collections, including the National Gallery of Art and the Hirshhorn Museum in Washington, D.C.; the Tate Modern and the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York; the Centre Pompidou, Paris; and the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam. He is represented by Pace Gallery, New York; Annemarie Verna Galerie, Zurich; David Kordansky Gallery, Los Angeles; and Modern Art, London/Paris.

In Person Viewing: 657 Howard Street, San Francisco, CA 94105