Olga Balema

Olga Balema’s sculptures and paintings have an overt attachment to the physicality of the materials she uses, be it steel pipes or fragments of broken English. Her works employ their respective decay or dysfunction as an aesthetic choice. She has suspended pebbles, oxidized pipes, cement, and newspaper in water or latex pouches, sealed and place on the floor, effectively altering their characteristics or rendering them completely useless. Stretched gloves made of iron or rusted metal panels are abstractions, reliant upon the viewer’s imagination, rather than indications of negligence. Balema’s works are romantic, hefty, prominent translations of 19th century ideals with modern materials.

Balema’s work has been featured at institutions including Le Magasin Grenoble-CNAC, France, Sculpture Center, New York, David Roberts Foundation, London, Fridericianum, Kassel, Rijksakademie van beeldende kunsten, Amsterdam, Casco, Utrecht, and UCLA, Los Angeles, among others. She took part in 2015 Triennial: Surround Audience at the New Museum in New York, and was awarded a residency by the Dutch Ministry of Education, Culture, and Science in 2011.