Household Spirit. Dominika Olszowy. Raster Gallery
Dominika Olszowy, an artist known for post-internet confabulations, balances in real life on the border between sculpture, installation and scenography. At Raster Warsaw she creates a new type of quasi-performative space that requires active exploration by viewers, while provoking questions about the theatricality of our everyday rituals, habits, desires and fears.
The exhibition Household Spirit alludes to domestic space as characterized by conflicting emotions: a sense of comfort and fear, solace and suffocation, repose and paranoia. Black coffee splashes over the walls here like blood in a horror film.
The objects and situations created by the artist emanate both good energy and bad taste, suggesting the possibility of rest and the threat of psychological torture. In her work, Olszowy combines a fascination with vernacular spirituality, the new age culture of omens and charms, with the psychoanalysis of common household devices: leather upholstered furniture, curtains. The stories hidden behind them offer the potential for fantasy and therapy. The true but invisible protagonists of the exhibition are household spirits, which according to ancient superstition leave traces that are hard to miss.
