Wood, construction foam, fabric
60 x 28 cm
Unique
Certificate
Olga Balema uses organic materials, plastics such as latex, obsolete world maps and other everyday objects as her pictorial and sculptural material. A recurring interest is the body as a self-contained and permeable unit. Her sculptures are partly porous and seem to be in a permanent exchange with their environment. Her work contains something past, something outdated, in which the gender-specific body takes on a constantly transforming multifaceted form. Olga Balema’s works produced for the Kunstverein are borrowed from her biomorphic and physical forms without being explicit. Their haptic quality evokes tactile memories.
After her MFA at the University of California in Los Angeles Olga Balema (*1984 in Lviv, lives in New York) participated in the residence program of the Rijksakademie van beeldenden kunsten in Amsterdam 2011/12. Balema has had solo exhibitions at the Swiss Institute in New York (2016) and at the Kunstverein Nürnberg (2015). Recently, she participated in the group show Maskulinitäten. Eine Kooperation von Bonner Kunstverein, Kölnischem Kunstverein und Kunstverein für die Rheinlande und Westfalen, Düsseldorf im Kölnischen Kunstverein (2019). Her works were part of the Whitney Biennale (2019), the Baltic Triennale (2018) and the New Museum Triennale (2015).
