Works in Show
To be Updated After the Opening Ceremony
Artist Biography
Laura Olenska is a French born painter based in Wellington, New Zealand, where she has lived and worked since 2017. She is a self taught artist with a background in art history and cinematography in Paris. Working primarily in oil on canvas from her studio in Wellington, Olenska builds her paintings through layered classical techniques, while developing contemporary psychological narratives. Rooted in existential concerns, her work examines what it means to inhabit a vulnerable, desiring and often contradictory human condition.
Artist Statement
My paintings begin with images that insist on existing before they are fully understood. They emerge from inner visions, emotional necessity and a need to give form to sensations that have no language. Rather than illustrating stories, I construct symbolic figures that embody psychological states. I am drawn to moments where opposites coexist, where elevation and collapse, beauty and disturbance, strength and fragility inhabit the same body. Through these tensions, I question the instability of identity and the complexity of desire. Oil painting allows me to build these presences slowly, letting atmosphere and ambiguity carry meaning. While my work engages with existential concerns, moments of distance occasionally surface. At times, I enjoy observing the human condition with a certain lightness, allowing fragility and contradiction to be approached without solemnity.
Sinking by Laura Olenska
Laura Olenska
Artist
