Paulina Olowska Resonance* Kurimanzutto, 2023
Paulina Olowska often works with references from the past that appear in her pieces as ghosts and apparitions, vibrations of another era that interfere with her pictorial creations. In Resonance, Olowska makes direct reference to the archive of artist and fashion photographer Deborah Turbeville from MUUS Collection. Turbeville’s photographic sessions in Poland and in Mexico in the 80’s and 90’s inspired Olowska to recreate some of the scenes and respond to many of the mysterious and fleeting images in her work.
In search of traces from Turbeville’s visit to Mexico in 1989, Olowska travelled there in 2022 and collaborated with painter and muse Carmen Serratos and photographer Karla Ximena Cerón. Together they reactivated and performed tableaux vivants in different sites in connection to Tuberville’s residence in San Miguel de Allende, where she had bought an 18th century house (currently called Casa No Name), and the mining ghost town of Mineral de Pozos to recreate and reimagine scenes from the fashion photographer’s imaginary among the ruins, the opuntia cacti and the abandoned cemetery.