Odili Donald Odita on the 2025 MoMA Black Arts Council Profit at on April 3, 2025 in New York Metropolis (photograph by Dimitrios Kambouris/Getty Photos)
Artist Odili Donald Odita is suing Jack Shainman Gallery in New York Metropolis, accusing it of wrongfully retaining over $1 million value of art work because it “failed to adequately protect and sell” his work in a declare that challenges fashions on the very coronary heart of the gallery system.
Alleging 5 separate counts, together with violation of the artist-merchant relationship below New York state regulation and breach of fiduciary responsibility, Odita is requesting an unspecified quantity in damages in addition to the return of his items. In an announcement to Hyperallergic, a spokesperson for Jack Shainman stated the gallery “disputes all claims made by Odita and will be providing a full response in public court filings.”
The lawsuit, filed in New York State Supreme Court docket on October 3, facilities round a comparatively commonplace gallery association. An August 2016 letter of settlement, included in court docket filings and reviewed by Hyperallergic, acknowledged that the gallery would pay Odita month-to-month stipends of $14,000, offsetting these advance funds via gross sales of his work. When gross sales generated extra income than advances paid out, Odita can be paid the excess at 12 months’s finish. Ought to there be a deficit — that’s, much less art work income than month-to-month stipends paid out — the gallery would “review the monthly payments to determine what adjustments must be made,” the settlement stated.
After working below these phrases for eight years, in October 2024, a senior director at Jack Shainman notified the artist that his month-to-month stipends can be halted, citing a “large outstanding deficit,” the lawsuit states. Regardless of Odita’s protestations, the gallery insisted that it retained the correct to proceed promoting his work, the submitting says.
However whereas the gallery “continued to sell Mr. Odita’s artwork, it has not done so with the frequency it once did, nor has it expended additional resources to ensure prompt sale of Mr. Odita’s artwork,” the swimsuit claims. Six months later, Odita knowledgeable Shainman, the gallery’s namesake proprietor, that he wished to terminate the consignment settlement and retrieve his work. The gallery allegedly responded that Odita must pay the excellent steadiness in full — roughly $350,000 in March 2025, per the submitting — earlier than the works can be returned.
Odita stated he requested to attempt to promote the artworks himself or via one other gallery, and use the proceeds to repay the steadiness. Jack Shainman Gallery declined, the swimsuit claims, “directly impacting his ability to earn a living and his overall reputation as an artist.” The lawsuit additionally accuses the gallery of errors or “at worst, deliberate manipulation” in its accounting, particularly because it pertained to bills deducted from Odita’s share of gross sales proceeds.
Reached through his attorneys at Barnes & Thornburg LLP, Odita declined to remark. David Kordasnky Gallery and Stevenson Gallery, which signify Odita in Los Angeles and Cape City, respectively, haven’t but responded to Hyperallergic‘s inquiries.
Born in 1966 in Enugu, Nigeria, and at the moment residing in Philadelphia, Odita is thought for outsized geometric canvases and public artworks whose vibrant patterns and colours discover the political implications of abstraction. His works promote for “hundreds of thousands of dollars,” in response to the court docket submitting. Odita’s latest large-scale set up, a site-specific fee for the foyer of the Museum of Trendy Artwork in Manhattan, opened this previous spring.
Jack Shainman runs three areas in New York, together with its Chelsea flagship, an Upstate exhibition house referred to as The Faculty, and a newly opened gallery in Tribeca’s historic Clock Tower that Shainman reportedly bought for $18.2 million. The gallery has mounted eight solo exhibitions of Odita’s work, most lately in 2023.
Odita’s identify is now not listed on a roster on the gallery’s web site, and a web page devoted to the artist seems to be defunct.
