SUMMERACADEMY.AT | Artist's talks

Language: English
Location: Mönchsberg 32, 5020 Salzburg

Before the artist’s talk at 5.30 p.m., Antonia Lotz, curator of the Generali Foundation collection, will give a guided tour of the Foto Kinetik exhibition she curated in the Museum of Modern Art Salzburg.

Paulina Olowska’s presentation will be followed by a conversation between Sabine Breitwieser and the artist. Sabine Breitwieser has been director of the Museum of
Modern Art Salzburg since 2013.
A co-operation between the Summer Academy and the Museum of Modern Art Salzburg.

“Applied fantastic” is a term first used by Polish journalistand writer Leopold Tyrmand in the 1960s to describe how fashion at the time was characterised by “necessary improvisation”. By this he meant a certain way of combining raw materials to mimic a popular style that was unattainable because of economics or location, and in doing so creating something stranger and richer.

When I first heard this term, I immediately responded. I felt it resonated with my own practice, and I wanted to explore more deeply the possible outcomes of this method of appropriation. In the lecture, I will present historical reference materials from fashion and life-style magazines, such as the Polish women’s league’s Ty i Ja, as well as my own installation, performance and painting works which have been influenced by my findings.
Paulina Olowska, born in 1976 in Gdansk (PL), studies the processes of urban transformation and social relationships in an era of growing consumerism, and is interested in the function of painting as a fictional space. Paulina Olowska’s paintings, performances, videos and installations continuously explore forgotten figures of feminism, utopian promises articulated in Modernism, shifts in cultural perspective between East and West, minor histories and popular aesthetics. Olowska has undertaken frequent collaborations with artists including Bonnie Camplin in Salty Water/What of Salty Water at Portikus, Frankfurt (DE) in 2007, and Lucy McKenzie, with whom she created the bar Nova Popularna in Warsaw in 2003. Olowska has exhibited internationally at Manifesta 11, Zurich 2016, Carnegie International, Pittsburgh, PA (US) 2013, Steirischer Herbst, Graz (AT), 2010, and in biennials including Berlin Biennale, 2008, Moscow Biennale and Istanbul Biennial, both 2005, and La Biennale di Venezia (IT), 2003.

Solo exhibitions
2017 Slavic Goddesses, The Kitchen, New York, NY (US). 2016 Wisteria, Mysteria, Hysteria, Metro Pictures, New York. The Spell of Warsaw, Zacheta National Gallery of Art, Warsaw. 2013 Au Bonheur des Dames, Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam (NL). Pavilionesque, Kunsthalle Basel (CH). 2012 Mother 200, Simon Lee Gallery, London. 2011 The Revenge of the Wise-Woman, Foksal Gallery Foundation, Warsaw. 2010 The Magnificent Seven, CCA Wattis Institute for Contemporary Arts, San Francisco, CA (US). 2008 Usher We (Down There) with Bonnie Camplin, Tate Modern, London (performance). 2005 Alphabet, Galerie Meerrettich, Berlin (performance). 2004 Sie musste die Idee eines Hauses als Metapher verwerfen, Kunstverein Braunschweig, Brunswick (DE). 2003 Galerii Foksal, Warsaw. 2002 Romancing with Avant-garde, National Gallery, Sopot (PL). 2001 Heavy Duty with Lucy McKenzie, Inverleith House, Edinburgh (GB).

Publications
Paulina Olowska: Pavilionesque at the Kunsthalle Basel, exh. cat. Kunsthalle Basel, JRP Ringier, Zurich 2013.
Claire Bishop, “Paulina Olowska: Reactivating Modernism”, Marta Dziewanska, “Storytelling: Paulina Olowska and History in Motion”, Catherine Wood, “Design for Living”, in: Parkett, 92, 2013.
Nikola Dietrich (ed.), Salty Water/What of Salty Water, exh. cat. Portikus, Verlag der Buchhandlung Walther König, Frankfurt 2007.

Artist's talks

Paulina Olowska