2013 Catalogue Archive

Alex Olson makes formally elegant works that wrestle with paint as material and sign. By using trowels, palette knives, window scrapers, and inexpensive brushes, Olson creates works with audaciously blunt and direct applications of paint that leave familiar marks akin to domestic and stylistic wall finishes. In Space, we feel the painting to be a knowable place due to the gray “swirl-texture”, yet, it is drawn and pushed back by its ominous red void in the center. Alex Olson lives and works in Los Angeles. She has had solo exhibitions in London, New York, and Chicago. Recent group exhibitions include the Tenth Anniversary Show, Wallspace, New York; Painter Painter, Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; and Made in LA, Hammer Museum, Los Angeles. Her work is included in the permanent collection of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art; the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; and the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles.