Paulina Olowska

For her first solo exhibition at Simon Lee Gallery, Paulina Olowska will show a group of new paintings which continue her exploration of feminist and socially engaged themes, of shifts in cultural perspective between East and West and of the female figure as archetype. Much of Olowska’s recent painting has paid homage to women artists, often overlooked, whose works have influenced or inspired her. Pauline Boty, the pioneering British pop artist, until recently more known as muse than painter, Zofia Styrenska, whose motifs were appropriated by the Polish state without acknowledgement or permission, and Alina Szapocznikow the avant-garde sculptor, who represented Poland in the Venice Biennale of 1962 have all appeared as subjects of Olowska’s recent exhibitions and return as echoes here. But their influence in this group of paintings softens into a reflection on the archetype of the female image, the idea of the muse in its most rudimentary...