Photo: agataolek.com
All images courtesy of Agata Olek
If you ever want to find yourself dumbstruck by the colorful audacity of artwork, then stop to feast your eyes on the crocheted mayhem that is the produce of Polish born Agata Olek.
The kaleidoscope of colors used, which often seem at war with one another, hits you in the face like a wake-up call, as you realize just how must has gone into these creations, hundreds of miles of crocheted, weaved and often recycled materials being the raw material from which are born her astoundingly inventive creations.
Photo: seeminglee
Born Agata Oleksiak in Poland and preferring to be referred to simply as ‘Olek’, this talented woman graduated from Adam Mickiewicz University in Poland with a degree in cultural studies before moving to New York city, where she now lives and works. Having learned how to crochet at an early age, she began to see that this skill could be interpreted as art and about a decade ago of bringing the astonishing results to public attention.
Photo: seeminglee
Olek’s unforgettable artworks have been exhibited in galleries all around the world, including Brooklyn, Istanbul, Venice and Brazil. Articles about her fantastic creations have appeared in The New York Times, Fiberarts Magazine, The Village Voice, and the Washington Post. She received the 2004 Ruth Mellon Award for Sculpture and was a winner of the Apex Art Gallery commercial competition. Her work also featured during the 49th Venice Bienale celebration art exhibition.
Photo: agataolek.com
Olek has designed sets and costumes for dance, theater and film and has taught costume design workshops for materials for the arts. She is usually to be found at her Greenpoint studio with a bottle of spiced Polish vodka and a hand-rolled cigarette, frowning in concentration and re-creating the world as she sees it through her art.
Photo: agataolek.com
Since her work is sculptural in form, she often seeks to shock and surprise with larger pieces in the form of installations, recently developing crocheted camouflage pieces, with which she aims at giving new meaning to objects such as an abandoned house, benches of a commercial boat, a footbridge, a Polish WWII bunker and the windows of the public boat in Istanbul.
Photo: agataolek.com
Olek has always been fascinated by the relationship between crocheted and the human body to the extent that she actually used crochet to recreate sperm, human skeletons, garments, cancer cells, bodies, self-encasements and entire interiors that the body enters. Much of the materials for her sculptures are ephemeral in nature, suggesting that they have only a limited life.
Photo: agataolek.com
Olek says of her work: “I think crochet, the way I create it, is a metaphor for the complexity and interconnectedness of our body and its systems and psychology. The connections are stronger as one fabric as opposed to separate strands, but, if you cut one, the whole thing will fall apart. Relationships are complex and greatly vary situation to situation. They are developmental journeys of growth, and transformation. Time passes, great distances are surpassed and the fabric which individuals are composed of compiles and unravels simultaneously.”
Photo: agataolek.com
She continues: “My camouflage sculptures/installations refer to human behavior, intended to make both the viewer and the performer conscious of their movements and interactions. Perception in our contemporary society is reality. But like camouflage, perception shifts and has no anchor or stability… its visibility is constantly changing and moving. This is what Olek feels is the strength of her message and it is difficult indeed to disagree.”
Photo: seeminglee
The glory of art is that every single viewer of any given piece will have that slightly altered perception, each one as unique as a fingerprint. The real test of quality for any artwork has to be the length of time spent simply looking at it with wonder, and this Olek’s works pass every time with flying colors. Her art is stunning, memorable and thankfully ongoing. Everything this incredible artist does deserves warm recognition, and we can only hope that she continues to amuse and amaze us for many more years yet.
Photo: seeminglee
Photo: agataolek.com
