Huile sur toile, 2022
In my paintings I always consider theatre as a framework, and I often employ the motif of the viewer as a narrative device. The depicted scene borrows from the language of soap operas, with all of the melodrama of sex, violence, betrayal, danger, desire, and heartbreak. The absurd stag- ing of Stalker presents a complex relationship of anthropomorphized matches, in a prompt to interrogate the triangulation of audience-actordirector and the politics of viewing.
Olga Abeleva is based in Montréal and Frankfurt am Main. She received her BFA from the Emily Carr University of Art in Vancouver and is currently studying with Monika Baer at Städelschule. Approaching painting through a theatrical and cinematic lens, she employs a cast of archetypal characters to parody social and cultural conventions. Densely layered with quotations from both classic and esoteric sources, her paintings are notations for larger schemes. They document a post-verbal descent into madness as their internal logics of representation disintegrate. Telenovela themes of family, money, and desire are used as readymades for content, as different materialities of painting coexist irreverently alongside one another.
Abeleva’s work is held in private collections across Canada and Europe. Recent exhibibions include Milk Can Escape at Centre CLARK (Montréal), Sous la Jupe de la Tour Eiffel at GROTTO (Berlin), and Desire Paths at Unit 17 (Vancouver). She has an upcoming residency at puntWG in Amsterdam.