Paulina Olowska
There's Nothing Not After Daisies, 2013
Oil on canvas
200 ร 230 cm
About the work
Before you is Thereโs Nothing Not After Daisies from 2013. The painting depicts the two main characters from Vฤra Chytilovรกโs 1966 film Sedmikrรกsky, or Daisies: Marie and Marie.
Olowska first saw the film when she was twelve. She recognised three elements in it that are also important in her own work: collage, playful combinations and politics.
For this painting, she first created a large collage in which she combined the two characters with posters from her first exhibition in Poland, Romancing with Avantgarde, held in 2000. Other personal references also appear. โPGSโ, for example, refers to the galleryโs former logo, while โWczoraj i dziลโ is Polish for โyesterday and todayโ.
At the top is the name Popova, a reference to the Russian avant-garde artist Liubov Popova. The poster featuring a question mark and a crossword motif is another recurring element in Olowskaโs visual language.
The painting thus brings together different periods and memories. It refers to the avant-garde, Olowskaโs youth and her own artistic past. At the same time, it expresses doubt about attempts to reconstruct modernism. The title Thereโs Nothing Not After Daisies reinforces this critical perspective on the meaning of cultural history itself.
Paulina Olowska
ยฐ 1976 in Gdaลsk, Poland. Lives and works in Rabka-Zdrรณj and Krakรณw, Poland.
As a painter, photographer and filmmaker, she creates projects in which art and functionality merge. Her murals and performances draw on Pop Art, graffiti, Soviet propaganda and Polandโs pre-1989 popular visual culture.
Olowska combines Western and Eastern European influences with avant-garde techniques. She studied at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and later at the Academy of Fine Arts in Gdaลsk. Her interest in modernism and the avant-garde plays an important role in her artistic practice.
She has presented solo exhibitions at institutions including Kunsthalle Basel, the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam and Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo in Turin. Her work has also been shown at MoMA in New York, Tate Modern in London, LACMA in Los Angeles and the Liverpool Biennial.
In 2014, Olowska received the Aachen Art Prize. Her work is held in major international collections, including those of MoMA, Fondation Louis Vuitton, SFMOMA and the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam.