Green Dick from the performance “How Big Of a Dick Are You?”
Performance culminated with the arrest on February 12, 2020, Mattress Factory Museum, Pittsburg, PA
Crochet metallic and acrylic tread, COA provided
8 x 14 ”

STATEMENT:

You are about to get turn inside out, upside down and you are going to love it. I am a two-spirit person; a child of the witches they did not burn; a failed art critic and a self-taught artist. All Art is a Self Portrait. Fear is a cockblocker of dreams. What is coming is better what is gone. The best teacher is my last mistake. Appearances can be deceiving. Art is to the spirit what food Is to the body and what sex is to the species. Art is what keeps spirit alive. Don’t ever ask a bird, 'How do you fly?' Everything important is right in front of you. I crochet moments so they will not die. If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together

Some people don’t think miracles happen, well, they do. I make shit happen so let’s make some epic shit together.

Like the perpetual punishments of Sisyphus or Prometheus, my work is never finished. It’s not patience, it’s passion. Mattress Factory, YOU ARE MY SOULMATE!

BIO:

Art and life are inseparable.
Olek was born in 1978, in a communist Poland. They grew up in a place that was very stingy with possibilities and granted them no eccentricities. They felt like they had to yank up their skirt, expose their bruised knees and bolt the hell out of there.
Olek graduated from Adam Mickiewicz University in Poland with a degree in cultural studies. In New York, they rediscovered their ability to crochet, Holland Cotter described their installation as “a tour-de-force”, and since then they have started their crocheted madness.
Olek's work has been exhibited in galleries, museums (Avesta Museum, Sweden; The Brooklyn Museum; Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Netherlands; Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, DC; the Urban Nation Museum, Germany; Fluctuart Museum, Paris) and public spaces worldwide and featured in numerous publications such as The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, New York Magazine, TIME Magazine, Vogue Italia, Newsweek/ Daily Beast, Village Voice, Vibe Magazine, Artinfo, PBS, CNN, CBS, ABC and NBC. They are the recipient of many rewards and been selected for various residencies around the world; and drag a tail of dance performance sets and costumes too numerous to mention.


Olek received the Ruth Mellon Award for Sculpture, was selected for the residency program at Sculpture Space, twice at Instituto Sacatar in Brazil, Lower East Side Rotating Studio Program in NYC, LMCC in NYC, Barnes Foundation in Philadelphia, Villa Alliv in Marseille, France and for 2020, Mattress Factory, Pittsburg. They are a winner of apex art gallery's commercial competition. Olek was an artist in an independent collective exhibition, Waterways, during the 49th Venice Biennale and a featured artist in Two Continents Beyond, at the 9th International Istanbul Biennale.

Now, Olek can be found in their little cave in Brooklyn reweaving a new reality in VR in self-isolation

excellent