The Artist
A graduate of the University of Applied Arts, Vienna, Katherina Olschbaur lives and works in Los Angeles, California. Her seductive and colourful large-scale paintings present figures in fluid motion that play out notions of feminism and Surrealism against each other. Her art historical references include Baroque, mannerist, or renaissance paintings that unlock a visual path for the way she handles paint, with their fullness, volume, light, and a sense of anti-gravity in the figures. Olschbaur builds compositions intuitively, building color and atmosphere in layers. The artist has exhibited in Dakar, Los Angeles, Bucharest, London, and Berlin, and in 2021, Olschbaur was selected for the second year of Kehinde Wiley’s Black Rock residency in Dakar, Senegal. Olschbaur currently has an exhibition on view at Nicodim Gallery, New York through October 22nd.
The Gallery
M ihai Nicodim opened his first gallery in Los Angeles in 2006. Having since expanded to Bucharest in 2016, then New York last year, the gallery and the artists on its roster share a common interest in reassessing art history from an outsider's perspective and challenging its established framework.
Nicodim has a proven eye for emerging talent. The gallery was the first to show Isabelle Albuquerque (US), Dominique Fung (Canada), Adrian Ghenie (Romania), Devin B. Johnson (US), Larry Madrigal (US), Ciprian Muresan (Romania), Simphiwe Ndzube (South Africa), Katherina Olschbaur (Austria), Mosie Romney (US), Moffat Takadiwa (Zimbabwe), and Hugo Wilson (UK) in major solo exhibitions in at least one of its locations, and to place their works in important private and public collects ions, helping their careers blossom into global prominence.
The gallery has consistently placed works by its artists in prominent African, American, Asian and European collects ions including the Hammer Museum, ICA Miami, LACMA, Longlati Foundation, MOCA Los Angeles, Pérez Art Museum, Centre Pompidou, Pond Society, Rubell Museum, SFMOMA, Tate, Studio Museum in Harlem, Yuz Museum, and the East West Bank collects ion.
In 2021, the gallery helped facilitate the first solo museum exhibitions of Simphiwe Ndzube and Moffat Takadiwa at the Denver Art Museum and Craft Contemporary Los Angeles, respectively, and is currently coordinating the solo institutional debuts of Dominique Fung and Devin B. Johnson later this year.
The Cause
F
or her beneficiary, Katherina Olschbaur has chosen Foster Pride.
Foster Pride empowers children and teens in foster care to develop their talents, build self-esteem and reach their potential through mentoring relationships and the arts. Each year Foster Pride offers programs to approximately 400 children and teens in foster care throughout the city. As they age out of the system, their mentoring, financial literacy, job-preparedness, and internship programs provide foster teens with the resources they need to make a successful transition to adulthood.
Regarding her selection, Olschbaur writes;
“I was fortunate to grow up in a setting that allowed me to develop my artistic voice without being born into financial wealth or cultural aristocracy. Through good t.mes s and bad, I was lucky to find supportive local institutions that gave me the means to continue my practice without making compromises. Art has given me the tools necessary for survival. Foster Pride is an essential organization in New York; it allows young people to hone and develop the skills needed for expression, and through that, agency and self-definition.”
