Camden Arts Centre presents a new group exhibition Head-Wig (Portrait of an exhibition) curated by Polish artist Paulina Olowska. Olowska has selected works by a range of international artists including painting, film and photography. Together the works share a common theme, what Olowska has termed ‘perceptual ambiguity’ and most of the artworks operate within the genre of portraiture either specifically or ambiguously including works by Jarosław Bauć, Jakub Julian Ziółkowski, Cindy Sherman and Katharina Wulff.
The subject for the exhibition originated from Olowska’s interest in a painting by Józef Mehoffer (1869 – 1949), a leading painter of the Young Poland movement, Portrait of Artist’s Wife on Yellow Background (1907). This painting, which can be found in the collection of the National Museum in Warsaw, illustrates an elegant woman wearing a large fur hat but on further examination could also depict a monster with a golden eye.
In her own practice Olowska often collaborates with other artists and is interested in artists or movements which have been overlooked in art history. For this exhibition she will be creating a series of new paintings based on portraits through the centuries and will also collaborate with Mathilde Rosier to compose an installation in Gallery 3 including objects by Cathy Wilkes.
The exhibition as a whole can be seen as a mise- en- abyme, a hall of mirrors, in which the outrageous, the hysterical and the intimate all speak to one another, sharing the same psychic space. Olowska has specifically planned the installation in order to create a kind of labyrinth of images distorting the space of the gallery so that a narrative arises between the different pieces. Altogether the works will ‘form a unique constellation where clichés become surreal and the usual uncanny’.
Head-Wig includes work by Jarosław Bauć, Simon Ling, Nina Köennemann, Elka Krajewska, Ken Okiishi, Paulina Olowska, Mathilde Rosier, Cindy Sherman, Catherine Sullivan, Cathy Wilkes, Katharina Wulff and Jakub Julian Ziółkowski.
This exhibition follows on from a number of shows select ed by artists at Camden Arts Centre, including, Strange Events Permit Themselves the Luxury of Occurring by Steven Claydon (2007); An Aside by Tacita Dean (2005) and Thinking Aloud, by Richard Wentworth (1998).
Camden Arts Centre, Arkwright Road, London NW3 6DG
www.camdenartscentre.org
