Liste Art Fair Basel, Booth No. 85
Lin Olschowka
16.06.-22.06.2025
Preview
Courtesy: the artists and Windhager von Kaenel
Text
Lin Olschowka is always looking for subjects she doesn’t understand. Because Olschowka paints things to explore them. Or to draw them closer, which, paradoxically, pushes them further into obscurity. She offers a selection of motifs which might at first seem eclectic, but they all – unmistakably – share an eerie coldness where the light is harsh, and bodies resemble interchangeable objects rather than characterful subjects. Olschowka lures us into a world that we might not want to enter. But then again, their familiarity reminds us that we are already in it.
At Liste Art Fair 2025, Olschowka will be presenting some large-format as well as a selection of smaller paintings that offer a broad insight into her practice. While the motifs chosen lose their original function when taken out of context – the before-and-after images are supposed to make visible the physical transformation of a nose, a helicopter beam illuminates what otherwise remains in darkness, presentations usually serve analytical purposes – Olschowka seems to abstract their meaning to translate it into symbolic language. This is how she chooses motifs and dissects them in front of us, turns them into objects, into mere representations of things, into symbols which point towards their dark spots. Olschowka is interested in pictures within pictures and the act of making them visible. Present absences.
In her works, Olschowka responds to the subliminally urgent power of the images that surround us both online and offline, whereas she negotiates the relationships between visibility and invisibility, but also between knowledge and the lack of it. Olschowka scans images layer by layer and creating a replica to investigate what an image is and what images do to us. She would be delighted if visitors at Liste Art Fair 2025 engaged with her work in the same way.
Works
Lin Olschowka
Archiving Replicas, 2025
acrylic on wood
30 x 37,5cm
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Lin Olschowka
Mirrored Twins, 2025
acrylic on wood
19,4 x 28,4cm
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Repoussoir 2, 2024
acrylic on wood
30 x 37,5cm
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Shadow Index, 2025
acrylic on wood
19,4 x 28,4cm
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Lin Olschowka
Parallel Lines, 2024
acrylic on canvas
210 x 210cm, 3 parts
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Lin Olschowka
Spotting Each Other, 2023
acrylic on canvas
248 x 161cm
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Lin Olschowka
Observations on a Reduced
Colour Scheme 1, 2024
acrylic on wood
19,4 x 28,4cm
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Lin Olschowka
Observations on a Reduced Colour Scheme 2, 2024
acrylic on wood
28,4 x 19,4cm
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Lin Olschowka
Repoussoir 4, 2025
acrylic on canvas
280 x 370cm
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Artist’s Biography
Archiving Replicas, 2025
acrylic on wood
30 x 37,5cm
Inquire
Mirrored Twins, 2025
acrylic on wood
19,4 x 28,4cm
Inquire
Repoussoir 2, 2024
acrylic on wood
30 x 37,5cm
Inquire
Shadow Index, 2025
acrylic on wood
19,4 x 28,4cm
Inquire
Parallel Lines, 2024
acrylic on canvas
210 x 210cm, 3 parts
Inquire
Spotting Each Other, 2023
acrylic on canvas
248 x 161cm
Inquire
Observations on a Reduced Colour Scheme 1, 2024
acrylic on wood
19,4 x 28,4cm
Inquire
Observations on a Reduced Colour Scheme 2, 2024
acrylic on wood
28,4 x 19,4cm
Inquire
Repoussoir 4, 2025
acrylic on canvas
280 x 370cm
Inquire
Lin Olschowka, *1995 in Münsterlingen (CH), is a painter living and working in Karlsruhe (DE). Olschowka holds a master’s degree from the Academy of Fine Arts Karlsruhe (DE). Recent exhibitions include Meyer Riegger, Karlsruhe (DE); Rosgartenmuseum, Konstanz (DE); Hamlet, Zürich (CH); and Museum zu Allerheiligen, Schaffhausen (CH). Her paintings deal with the topics of replica, context, and functionality of images.