The Hannah Hoffman Gallery celebrated the art of Olga Balema on April 8, 2023. Loon is the artist’s 2nd exhibition with the gallery, and will remain on view through May 13, 2023.

Loon; artwork by Olga Balema

Olga Balema works from a space that is searching, intuitive and imaginative, relying on the visual rather than the narrative as a guide. Formal integrity and rigor are at the core of her process and meaning emerges gradually. The sculpture develops through self-referentiality and visual association: a particular aspect of one work might reappear and be reworked in the next one. Outer edges – the way they’re constructed, layered over with varied materials, heat-sealed, broken, and glued again – may, for example, become the basis for a future body of work. The sculptures in Loon, made from transparent material, follow a trajectory that Balema has pursued intermittently for several years.

Olga Balema (b. 1984, Lviv, Ukraine) lives and works in New York, NY and Berlin, Germany. She holds an MFA from UCLA, Los Angeles and has had residencies at Rijksakademie van Beeldende Kunsten, Amsterdam, The Netherlands and Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, Maine, USA. Recent solo exhibitions include: Early Man, Swiss Institute, New York, NY (2016); Blasted Health, Capri, Düsseldorf, Germany (2016); One reenters the garden by becoming a vegetable, Kunstverein Nürnberg, Albrecht Dürer Gesellschaft, Nuremberg, Germany (2015); Cannibals, Croy Nielsen, Berlin, Germany (2015); Her Curves, High Art, Paris, France (2015). Recent group exhibitions include: I Am Still Alive – On the Materialities of Life, Moderna Museet, Stockholm, Sweden (2016); Adhesive Products, Bergen Assembly, Bergen, Norway (2016); Function Follows Vision, Vision Follows Reality, Kunsthalle Wien, Vienna, Austria (2015); Surround Audience, Triennial, New Museum, New York, NY (2015); Puddle, pothole, portal, Sculpture Center, New York, NY (2014); Doom: Surface Control, Le Magasin Grenoble, Grenoble, France (2014); Nature after Nature, Fridericianum, Kassel, Germany (2014).

On View: April 8, 2023 – May 13, 2023

What: Opening, Olga Balema
Where: Hannah Hoffman Gallery, 2504 W 7th Street, 2nd Floor, LA, 90057
Website: https://hannahhoffman.la/