Paulina Olowska

Enjoy the latest works of Paulina Olowska, presented at Pace Gallery, Geneva. Olowska’s multilayered practice—spanning painting, collage, sculpture, video, installation, and performance—is underscored by a curatorial methodology that treats the past, particularly the histories of female experience and perception, as her primary material.

This critical, always female, gaze is shaped by the intricate connections between the locations tied to her muses, the settings of her exhibitions, and her personal experiences of living and working in Eastern Europe. Through these posthumous collaborations with women artists, Olowska gives texture and dimension to the broader histories that they share.

For this exhibition – Widows of the Wind – Olowska has extended and reshaped the dialogue between her own work and that of Turbeville, 

Turbeville, a groundbreaking fashion editor, photographer, and artist, played a key role in elevating fashion photography into the realm of avant-garde art, alongside figures like Guy Bourdin and Helmut Newton. However, Turbeville’s approach contrasted with the ‘urban erotic underworld’ of her male peers, favoring a delicate, introspective female gaze.

While her art photography often bears the marks of scratches and printing manipulations, the photographs Olowska has selected are more commercial in nature, created as advertisements for high fashion. This tension—between their moody, introspective portrayal of the female psyche and their function as promotional objects—forms the crux of Olowska’s artistic response.

Paulina Olowska (b. 1976, Gdansk, Poland) was born in 1976 in Gdansk, Poland, and lives and works in Rabka Zdroj and Krakow, Poland. She received her BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Illinois in 1996 and earned an MFA from the Academy of Fine Arts, Gdansk, Poland in 2000.

PACE GALLERY
GENEVA, SWITZERLAND
Trough February 22, 2025

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