Emilia Olsen

Bio/CV: Emilia Olsen was born in Johannesburg, South Africa in 1989 due to her parents working in the Peace Corps. She grew up in Madison, WI and in 2011 she received her BFA from the Corcoran College of Art & Design in Washington, DC. She has exhibited her work nationally, with solo shows at Arts & Leisure (NY) and Doppelganger |Studio (Queens) and notable recent group exhibitions at the Spring Break Art Show (NY), Freight & Volume (NY), Gallery Also (LA), Elephant Gallery (Nashville), Greenpoint Terminal Gallery (Brooklyn), and Juxtapoz Projects at Mana Contemporary (NJ). She has been artist-in-residence at DNA Residency (Provincetown, MA); New York Studio Residency Program (Brooklyn, NY); Starry Nights (Truth Or Consequences, NM); Hotel Belmar (Costa Rica) and the Horse and Art Research Program (Hungary). Her work has been featured in Two Coats of Paint, Vogue, Art Maze, Hyperallergic, Maake Magazine, the podcast Sound & Vision and others. She lives and works in Brooklyn, NY.

Artist Statement: Emilia Olsen is primarily a figurative painter who’s experimented with artist books, drawing, site specific installation, and hand drawn animation. Olsen believes that to tell a true story, one must tell the one that they know. Her practice is to tell what she knows in the way she knows how.  The work features a personal array of symbolism; female nudes, pseudo self portraits, odalisques, skulls, bathers, ocean themes, and table settings. These images extend further into their own worlds. Renaissance works are a main reference point, along with a conceptual adolescence eventually influenced by Post-War Abstract Expressionism, and many contemporary figurative painters. This visual language manifests in reaction to daily rituals around mental health maintenance; personal documentation via journaling, photography, quick video recordings, and sketching; reading and research, especially of poetry and mythology; and the examination of personal experiences, memories. Each part of the ritual nudges the next. Olsen is heavily inspired by writers like bell hooks, jamie hood, Frank O’Hara, Maggie Nelson, who write things better said in their words, that speak to the inevitability of death, love, heartbreak, joy, grief. This relates to the artist’s ethos that all those big things are all connected, that they meet in the middle of an in-between, the twilights, the velvety nights, the way the light changes, the dreamlike, the hazy and the half asleep. Olsen reduces big emotions into a visual projection, the one happening around you when everything is happening. They are meant to symbolize the everyday moments, what happens in your periphery, however regular the scene. How some details loom bigger than others. How mythology is told. 

Selected Solo and Two Person Exhibitions: 
2021 Freight & Volume, New York, NY, What The Poet Said To The Painter, Pegasus Gallery, Brooklyn, NY 2020 Crying In Public, Two person show with Logan T Sibrel, Auxier Kline, New York, NY 2019 How To Be Alone (Site specific installation), Public Swim, New York, NY, There Is Another Sky, Arts & Leisure, New York, NY
2018 Death and the Maiden, Doppelgänger | Studio, Ridgewood, NY, The Moon and Me, Anaba Project, Bethesda, MD
2015 A Room Of Her Own, Two person show with Katie Batten, Gallery 1301, Baltimore, MD

Selected Group Exhibitions: 2021 A Vase Is A Vase Is A Vase, Deanna Evans Projects, Brooklyn, NY, Summer Stage: Act One, Auxier Kline, New York, NY, High Desert High, Smoke The Moon, Santa Fe, NM, Significant Others, Auxier Kline, New York, NY
2020 Suddenly Last Summer: Part 2, Auxier Kline, New York, NY, Pungent Dystopia, Freight & Volume, New York, NY, My Funny Valentine. Auxier Kline, New York, NY, Elements of Existence, Public Swim, New York, NY
2019 SPF32 curated by Madeleine Mermall, William Ulmer Brewery, Brooklyn, NY, I Heard A Fly Buzz When I Died curated by Chris Lucius, Brooklyn, NY, Spiritual Art Advisory curated by Sarah Potter and Caroline Larson, Spring Break Art Show NY, UN Plaza, New York, NY 2018 Ghosts of Electricity, Smoke the Moon, Los Angeles, CA, Seven Samurai, curated by Sue Muskrat and Phil Knoll, Platform Project Space, Brooklyn, NY, Velvet Ropes NYC, GIFC, Patrick Parrish Gallery, New York, NY, R E _ A R R A N G E, curated by Jessica Marie Ross, Juxtapoz Projects at Mana Contemporary, Jersey City, NJ, Painterly: Color, Stroke, Texture, Bessie's, Brooklyn, NY, Artist Project, curated by David Wang x Ed Varie, Independent Art Book Fair, Brooklyn, NY, The Other Side of Paradise, curated by Sabrina Bockler, Sincerely Tommy, Brooklyn, NY - Her Horizon, curated by Jenna June, Gallery Also, Los Angeles, CA, SKINS, Greenpoint Terminal Gallery, Brooklyn, NY, Summer of Love, Arts + Leisure, New York, NY, West Reading Museum of Temporary Art, Reading, PA - Introductions 2018, Trestle Gallery, Brooklyn, NY
2017 People and Plants, Elephant Gallery, Nashville, TN, Best Kept Secret, Geoffrey Young Gallery, Great Barrington, MA, Horse and Art Research Program Exhibition, Horse and Art Research Program, Barnag, Hungary, The Secret Life Of Plants, curated by Jennifer Coates & Nick Lawrence, Freight + Volume, New York, NY, New Imagism in Contemporary Painting, curated by Adam Zucker, Good Work Gallery, Brooklyn, NY, Nor Any Drop To Drink, curated by Adam Zucker, The Grady Alexis Gallery at El Taller Latino, Americano, New York, NY
2016 Got It For Cheap Volumes 2, 3, 4, 5, Various, Various, curated by Charlie Roberts 2015 - Jardín, Studio No. 4, Brooklyn, NY, Nostalgia In Reverse, Chinatown Soup, New York, NY, She Wolf, Present Works, Milwaukee, WI, Duck Show LA, curated by Ryan Travis Christian, Minotaur Projects, Los Angeles, CA

Awards: 2021, 2020, 2019, 2019 White Columns Artist Registry

Residencies: 2018 DNA Residency, Provincetown, MA, USA, Hotel Belmar, Monteverde, Costa Rica, Anaba Projects, Bethesda, MD, USA
2017 Starry Nights, Truth Or Consequences, New Mexico, USA, Artreach at THEARC / the 11th Street Bridge Project, Washington, DC, USA, Horse and Art Research Program, Barnag, Hungary
2011 Artreach at THEARC in conjunction with First Lady Michelle Obama & the Congressional Spouses, Washington, DC, USA
2009 New York Studio Residency Program, Brooklyn, NY, USA

Selected Collections: Fidelity Public Collection

Selected Press: Shout Out, Artnet, GQ, Sound & Vision, Two Coats of Paint, Art Maze, Hyperallergic, Maake Magazine, Dead Maidens, Vogue, ARTFCITY’S, Cheap & Plastique Magazine, Dirty Laundry Magazine, Worlds Best Ever

Social: @emiliaolsen.biz