This untitled installation by Olga Balema features a robust, dark form with jagged, irregular shapes that evoke a sense of tension and distortion. The piece appears as a textured, uneven silhouette against the wall, possibly employing materials like latex to create a contrast between soft and hard elements. Balema's postminimalist approach echoes the duality of fragility and rigidity, akin to corporeal contrasts. Historically, Balema's work explores the intersection of materials and forms, drawing parallels to Eva Hesse's practice and reflecting on the impermanence and tension inherent in physical structures. ...
Olga Balema’s artworks are an investigation of form. They are characterised by a tense relationship and contrasts in materiality, often comprising a hard framework with soft, fragile innards. Balema frequently employs latex which, especially in Bread for Life (2016), is held taut and barbed by jagged steel rods, or perhaps armatures, recalling Eva Hesse’s postminimalist practice and the slow sagging of the material over time. The notion of tension – perhaps most commonly, representations of the contrast between the hard bones of a human skeleton and the flesh that furnishes it – are further echoed in the rubber bands and shoelaces plotting a geometry across the gallery floor in brain damage (2019), the teetering globules of latex, moulded to look like breasts, protruding from the globe in 2016’s Globe, tacked on unsteadily, and the soft PVC sacks filled with steel rods and water, ready to burst, in Threat to Civilization 2 (2015). ...
In 2016 Croy Nielsen moved from Berlin to Vienna, where it is located in the beletage apartment of a historical building in the 1st district. The gallery was founded by Oliver Croy (AT) and Henrikke Nielsen (DK). Artists such as Nina Beier, Marie Lund, and Benoît Maire, have been part of the program since its inception, and were later joined by Olga Balema, Georgia Gardner Gray, and Sandra Mujinga. Vienna-based artists include Ernst Yohji Jaeger, Joanna Woś, and Soshiro Matsubara. The gallery has strong ties to the Nordic region, representing several artists from the Scandinavian contries and regularly participating in fairs and projects in the area. ...
