Alex Olson: A Platypus Glows Under Blacklight

Altman Siegel is pleased to announce A Platypus Glows Under Blacklight, a solo exhibition of new paintings by Los Angeles-based artist Alex Olson. The selection of new works, while consistent with Olson’s signature controlled materiality, mark-making, and collage-like approach, introduces a new element of script patterning and “text” components. A Platypus Glows Under Blacklight marks the artist’s second solo exhibition with Altman Siegel.

Within Olson’s new painted works her mastery of surface is evident. Through the use of color, layering, and texture (both in terms of three-dimensional impasto and in terms of implied textures within visual patterning), she controls surface tensions in a manner simultaneously meticulous and playful. Layers appear to peel away to reveal peaks at other layers, suggesting several paintings imbedded in one, some of which remain forever concealed, at least in part, like a Russian doll. Her mark-making pushes and pulls from both historical abstraction and contemporary design.

Another strategic yet playful recurring element in Olson’s practice is cross-referential nods between works. An example of this is the subtle dialogue between separate works, Page and Cover, both of which contain layers of painted effects that physically obscure a ground layer inscribed with carved marks, resembling notations and scribbles from Olson’s sketchbook. Text-based elements like jotted show notes, calligraphic scrawl and the Roman alphabet primer, seem to be attempting to reaffirm their own legitimacy or permanence by carving into the surface, only to be wryly obscured by the artist both materially and conceptually.

Whether partially revealed, hinted at, or otherwise resisting full literal consumption, the text components embedded in Olson’s new paintings dance just outside the grip of the legible, leaving us in a perpetually contemplative state, ever-hovering amongst the aesthetics of decipherability.

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