Paulina Olowska

Paulina Olowska’s (Gdańsk, 1976) artistic practice spans painting, collage, sculpture, video, installation, and performance. The artist has long been fascinated and influenced by the languages of advertising, graphic design, and fashion, through which she challenges art historical conventions and traditional representations of femininity.

For her solo exhibition at Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, Visual Persuasion (2023), an exploration of desire and persuasion from a female perspective, Olowska conceived a large site-specific neon installation. The neon series was imagined as a luminous palimpsest, inspired by signage seen in cities she has visited, from Paris to Chicago to Turin — words that wink, allude, and seduce.

Neon is a very important medium in Olowska’s practice. As a symbol of advertising communication in urban space, neon holds a strong connection to both applied arts and art history, a fusion that is central to Olowska’s work. She has specifically explored the history of neon signage that adorned the city of Warsaw during the socialist regime. Often lacking a clear commercial purpose, these neon lights became symbols of consumerism without a referent, pure signs of desire itself and its relationship with urban experience.

As part of News from the Near Future, an exhibition featuring works from the Sandretto Re Rebaudengo Collection organized to mark the Fondazione’s 30th anniversary, the neon works Amour and Le Select, produced for the artist’s solo exhibition, are installed on the exteriors of the two venues, the Fondazione itself and the Museo Nazionale dell'Automobile, sealing a conceptual connection and serving as an open invitation to the public.