Paulina Olowska

"Wisteria, Mysteria, Hysteria"

Metro Pictures

New York, 519 West 24th Street

Paulina Olowska, alongside Jakub Julian Ziolkowski, is of the most breathtaking Polish painters blending traditional Eastern European motifs with contemporary undertones. From her 2012 MoMA performance Alphabet, in which she recruited performers to contort their bodies to form each of twenty-six letters in the Latin alphabet to her 2015 Tate Modern project The Mother and Unsavoury Play in Two Acts and An Epilogue, for which she was turned the museum’s collection display into a setting for a Polish play from 1924, Krakow-based artist strongly nourishes from the vast intellectual and folkloric culture of her hometown. 

Paulina Olowska, Mysteria, 2016 Oil and acrylic on canvas Courtesy of the artist and Metro Pictures, New York

Trained at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago as well as the Academy of Fine Arts at Gdank in Poland, Olowska orchestrates an international conversation around political issues such as ideological oppression and power dynamics, while depicting their impact on individuals’ daily lives in her arresting work. Micro histories transform into grand scale paintings in which women don astonishing costumes surrounded by surreal landscapes—on the surface things may look calm, but her figures suffer from authoritarian ideologies. 

Wisteria, Mysteria, Hysteria at Metro Pictures will be followed by a performance series titled Performances at The Kitchen in January in collaboration with composer Sergei Tcherepnin.

November 4 — December 22, 2016