‘Works’ by Maria Olsen

Press, 15 October 1986, Page 24

‘Works’ by Maria Olsen

“Works” by Maria Olsen at the Brooke/Gifford Gallery until October 17. Reviewed by Pat Unger. Maria Olsen exhibits landscapes that are distinctly weird. For unknown reasons, haystacks and cauldrons that contain unknown fluids, sit on land of unrecognisable substance in a far-away and unknown place. The haystack looks believably of straw, although starting to generate its own decomposition. The cauldrons either thrust up or sink into a suffocating landscape and the liquid they store is, in some, like spiky acid and in others a drool of great density. They slop about or overflow onto a vast and de-flated-looking plain. Masonry arches, through which these objects are seen, ladders and reels that are lying about, allude to some human association. They imply the return of man to a primordial state, following some catastrophic act, or that these are the totems or gods of extraterrestials who misunderstood our quick visit, whilst going “where no man has gone before.”

The haystack is reminiscent of a Monet haystack, the ladder perhaps signifies the German painter, Jorg Immendorfs symbol of escape from a divided Berlin, the heavy masonry suggests human institutions and the cauldrons echo “Double, double, toil and trouble.” Monet painted -a kind of heroic beauty over everything, including haystacks, the land, labour and life. Today those images belong to the art of the past and financial investments of the present. Ladders of escape merely replace one servitude with another and human institutions divide and oppress as they protect and define. Perhaps Olsen is telling us that all human endeavour ultimately leads to

disillusionment and that by delving into the preconscious, new visions will refresh our life again. Certainly, when she leaves out the black arches, the works are freer and her landscapes, with their curious growths and hidden messages take on a more evocative and optimistic surrealism. Olsen, by an unrelenting style of line upon line in oil pastel, manipulates her colours in search of the right tonal subtlety to convey mood. In simple compositions, opaque white-outs, deathly lilac or living-pink grounds contrast the black cauldron, with the spits of red or blue. They scratch out their existence in unique landscapes and make very interesting challenges to that genre.