page_title: Shavo Odadjian
section_title: Painting and artwork
hierarchical_section_title: Shavo Odadjian / Other work / Painting and artwork
caption_attribution_description: English: One of Odadjian's many paintings used as a backdrop for System's 2006 Ozzfest performance
context_page_description: Shavarsh "Shavo" Odadjian is an Armenian-American musician, songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, music video director, and painter. He is best known as the bassist, backing vocalist and occasional songwriter of the Grammy Award-winning metal band System of a Down. During the band's hiatus from 2006 to 2010, Odadjian collaborated with Wu-Tang Clan founder RZA on a project called AcHoZeN, which contributed a number of songs to the motion picture Babylon A.D. A compilation album was released in 2015. Odadjian is also credited with the musical scoring of the film, alongside The Rza and Hans Zimmer. He originally used Gibson Thunderbird basses, a Fender Jazz Bass, an Ibanez BTB bass guitar, and a Music Man StingRay, but has since moved on to Warwick basses.
context_section_description: Odadjian is an avid and passionate painter outside of music. His artwork has been featured in many System of a Down music videos and live shows - including an abstract piece highlighted in the "Hypnotize" video. Odadjian's painting style is abstract with loud, bright colors that bleed into each other. During Ozzfest of 2006, Odadjian created a 27-piece, abstract mosaic of paintings that was utilized as the stage backdrop for System's headlining Ozzfest performance. (Stage design in System of a Down performances is also attributed to Odadjian). One critic wrote of the Ozzfest performance:
  Where most of the other bands on the bill stuck to the traditional metal imagery of skulls, blood and gore to enhance their stages, System went the other way, offering a series of abstract paintings that swished across an enormous video screen.
  Each of Odadjian's paintings for the 2006 Ozzfest performance were hand-picked by Odadjian himself. Odadjian states that, in pairing each of his pieces/backdrops to songs, he aimed to coordinate each unique emotion of a specific song to the matching vibe of his paintings.
caption: One of Odadjian's 26 abstract paintings that hung as a backdrop for Ozzfest 2006.
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