Mel Odom: Gorgeous!

Mel Odom — Gorgeous! presents a selection of paintings and drawings shaped by the American artist’s desire, a pageantry of bold, sensual figures and pop superstars cast in Odom’s trademark precision. ‘I drew who I wished I was’, he says, a transplant from the rural South enamoured with the shirtless ‘clones’ of New York’s Christopher Street. Edited by Luis Venegas in collaboration with Odom, this monograph spans the entirety of Odom’s career to date, charting the evolution from his early commissions for Time and Playboy to his most recent works.

Odom’s sensual images are accompanied by reflections from the artist himself taken from an interview between Odom and Venegas, a close conversation between friends that reads as a series of tender epiphanies. Memories of first love and acid-soaked discos are weighted by the loss of the AIDS crisis at its peak, a backdrop for Odom’s life in New York and a notable influence on his creations: ‘I thought I was … somehow living on borrowed time… That tends to make what you do with your time very important. I would do these drawings … and know that these were going to remain once I was gone. Once I was dead, this would be what people thought of me’.

Mel Odom — Gorgeous! faces this legacy with the artist’s insistence on pleasure, indulging in a lover’s touch, a porcelain brow, a celebrity’s glittery appeal. This monograph, which pairs the hardback design of a traditional artist’s book with the flair and attitude of a fanzine, is the first in a new series edited by the Spanish publisher Luis Venegas, originally featured in issue #18 of Apartamento magazine.