Collection

Winter Landscape is an instructional film containing a number of visualized tips on how to combat melancholy and the decline in vitality during the autumn and winter season. The work offers an ironic commentary on the current trend of seeking temporary improvement in mood by resorting to psychological and physical practices derived from various cultures. The video performance is filmed in the space of an apartment stripped of individual features, situated in an alienating zone of the global world (in what Marc Augé would call a “non-place”). The artist employs elements typical of esoteric practices, such as candles, fire, coffee, and stones. This set of props, along with the composition of the frames, the music and the editing, alludes to the aesthetic of films by David Lynch. Olszowy uses this allusion to underline the triviality of the proposed methods, by contrasting the sterile world of her construction with the mysterious atmosphere of Lynch’s films. She created the work during her “Weltschmerz” residency at the Contemporary Art Gallery in Opole.

Visual artist. She operates at the intersection of various media, using video, performance, installation, and a specific mixture of truth and confabulation. She is an intermedia graduate of the University of the Arts Poznań. Olszowy creates works which she often treats as amulets charming and taming a reality plunged in crisis. She often draws on personal experiences and processes them into universal statements, full of subtle humour, on the human condition and time. She has cofounded several collective artistic initiatives, from a feminist rap group to a motorcycle gang. She is the author of staged installations and theatrical performances. In 2019 she received the Deutsche Bank “Views” award. She lives and works in Warsaw.