Archive
2022
KubaParis
-ma-
Location
GALERIE ALBERDate
27.01 –19.03.2022Curator
GALERIE ALBERPhotography
Mareike TochaSubheadline
-ma- is the first solo exhibition of Cologne-based artist Olga Jakob at GALERIE ALBER. -ma- a Japanese concept that denotes the space between two objects, but at the same time also means the elemental emptiness that transcends opposites and fields of tension. This is where Olga Jakob's work is located, as an exploration of the thin membrane that separates us from nothingness. The exhibition shows how the artist implements this with current works.Text
Unfolding the Space
What is life made of? - Art poses this question in many different ways, mostly in the form of allegorical observations. Olga Jakob noticed early in her artistic career that she was drawn to the substance, the materiality of the world. Considering the fact that, at first glance, her works are clearly based on materiality, it may come as a surprise that she completed her studies at the State Academy of Fine Arts Karlsruhe in the painting class of Helmut Dorner. But this astonishment also paves the way to an understanding of Olga Jakob’s work. After all, it leads to an idea of art that undogmatically examines its own foundations. When, in 1958, the Italian pioneer of high modernism, Lucio Fontana, presented for the first time a monochrome canvas that had been worked on merely by cutting it with a knife, it remained unclear whether the painting surface had now become a sculpture. The painterly effect of his work is immediate; at the same time, however, he opened up the surface to the third dimension, asking: What is behind it?
Oliver Tepel