ODETTA – Art Spiel

May 15, 2020November 2, 2022

Artists on Coping: Ellen Hackl Fagan

During the Coronavirus pandemic, Art Spiel is reaching out to artists to learn how they are coping.

:headshot_seeking the sound of cobalt blue_portrait.jpg — Ellen Hackl Fagan, Seeking the Sound of Cobalt Blue, Installation during Bushwick Open Studios, 2018. Photo: Charles Geiger

Ellen Hackl Fagan is an artist and the creator of ODETTA, a contemporary fine art gallery in Harlem, NYC. Fagan builds connections between color and sound using color-saturated paintings, sculpture, installations and collaborative projects that explore our potential for synaesthesia, often resulting in ad hoc performances with viewers. Balanced between randomness and intention, like jazz music, Fagan’s art reveals limitless possibilities for improvisation. Fagan also invented The Reverse Color Organ (RCO), a web app that enables viewers to playfully interact aurally with color. Fagan exhibits her work extensively, curates, writes, and creates opportunities for collaborations with artists, curators, musicians, and coders to further her projects.

February 16, 2019February 16, 2019

Nota Bene with @postuccio [ii]

SRO Gallery, M. David & Co., ODETTA, Klaus Von Nichtssagend

SRO Gallery

Dozens of warmly chromatic landscapes with hints of fantasy and abstract intrigue are on view in “Unextinguished,” a kind of amuse-bouche of a genre-specific group show that opened at SRO Gallery a couple weeks ago. It features a great many paintings, and a great many relatively literal as well as apparently non-objective takes on landscapes by Sahand Tabatabai, Sheila Lanham , Cathy Diamond , Moses Hoskins, Cathy Nan Quinlan and Cecilia Whittaker-Doe. If you need a respite from the drudgery of winter (I always do), head over to SRO.

November 30, 2018May 30, 2020

Las Gravitas at ODETTA

Photos by Sharilyn Neidhardt, unless otherwise indicated

A show of swirling color and geometry finds ways to discuss complicated issues of violence and social collapse.

What drew me to ODETTA on a very chilly Saturday were the colorful, pagoda-like structures in the main space. Human-scale structures that echo lanterns or birdcages are covered in awkward spiky garlands of colored plastic tubes. The festive air created by the riot of bright color seems fun at first, and it’s only on second inspection that a viewer realizes the color is coming from spent shotgun shells.

Margaret Roleke, ‘pop pop’ (installation view) spent shot gun shells, wire, zipties, steel boxes. 2 boxes each approx. 9’h x 5’w x 5’d

Continue reading “Las Gravitas at ODETTA”

March 21, 2018May 30, 2020

Nancy Baker: No Regrets at ODETTA

In her solo show “No Regrets” at ODETTA, Nancy Baker created intricate constructions which reflect her need for reliable reality through a rigorous process of interweaving mathematical data and text from the US Constitution into interlocking elegant forms. Continue reading “Nancy Baker: No Regrets at ODETTA”

August 27, 2015November 15, 2020

Searching for the Meaning of Art: ‘Thomas Lendvai: 10’ at ODETTA

Photos by Etty Yaniv unless otherwise indicated

For Ellen Hackl Fagan, ODETTA’s gallerist and curator, titling the current sculpture show Thomas Lendvai: 10 was a no-brainer. When artist Thomas Lendvai came up with the title “Ten,” which marks the first time in ten years that the sculptor has been given a chance to show his large-scale sculptures in a New York gallery, Hackl Fagan embraced it willingly. Serendipitously, it also marks the tenth show at ODETTA. Continue reading “Searching for the Meaning of Art: ‘Thomas Lendvai: 10’ at ODETTA”