Olga Balema’s installation features a dark, irregular form protruding from a wall, with a stark contrast between its rough, black surface and the exposed, raw edge. This abstract piece evokes tension and fragility, reminiscent of skeletal structures and organic materials. The style draws from postminimalism, utilizing mixed media to create a dynamic interplay of textures. Balema’s work often explores the themes of vulnerability and tension between hard and soft elements, underscoring the artist's ongoing inquiry into form and materiality. ...
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. ...
