Born in 1983 in Bregenz, Lake Constance, Austria
Lives and works in New York City, USA

Katherina OLSCHBAUR

Based in New York, Katherina Olschbaur trained in painting, animation film and stage design at the University of Applied Arts in Vienna. The Austrian-born artist was emboldened by her move to Los Angeles in 2017 to push the boundaries in exploring the tenuous relationship between representation and abstraction, creating the distinct viewpoints on light, color and form for which her painting practice is recognized. Her work reflects on connections and conflicts between dichotomous ideas such as systems of order and chaos, creation and destruction, received knowledge and personal experience, devotion and obsession, and collective and individual unconscious.

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education

2009  
-  Diploma in Fine Arts (Painting, Animation Film, Stage Design), University of Applied Arts Vienna, Austria

2005  
-  Erasmus Exchange, Wimbledon College of Art, London, UK

solo shows

2025
  Perrotin, New York City, USA  [forthcoming]

2024
  Sweet Expulsion, Perrotin, Paris, France

2023
  Sirens, DANGXIA Art Space, Beijing, China
  Midnight Spill, Perrotin, Hong Kong, HK SAR

2022
  Prayers, Divinations, Galeria Nicodim, New York City, USA

2021
  Live Flesh, Galeria Nicodim, Los Angeles, USA
  My Kingdom and a Horse (with Dominique Fung), Galeria Nicodim, Bucharest, Romania*
  Night Blessings, Union Pacific, London, UK

2020
  Tortured Ecstasies, Galeria Nicodim, Los Angeles, USA
  Dirty Elements, curated by Allyson Unzicker, Contemporary Arts Center Gallery, Claire Trevor School of the Arts, University of California, Irvine, California, USA

2019
  The Divine Hermaphrodite, GNYP Gallery, Berlin, Germany

2018
  Horses, Galeria Nicodim, Los Angeles, USA
  Deep Cuts, PØST, Los Angeles, USA
  WILDE REITER, OOF Books, Los Angeles, USA

2017  
  Liquid Promises, curated by Mia Laska, Bendix Building, Los Angeles, USA

2016  
  Haunted by Strokes, Galerie Werkstadt Graz, Austria
  Von Tangenten und Passanten (with Luisa Kasalicky), LLLLLL Space, Vienna, Austria*

2015  
  The Opening, Brick 5 Theater, Vienna, Austria
  PONG (with Olivia Kaiser), Kunstraum am Schauplatz, Vienna, Austria*

2013  
  Über Malerei, Academy of Fine Arts Vienna, Austria
  Dickicht (with Matthias Buch), Büro Weltausstellung, Vienna, Austria*

2011  
  Wicked Walls, Museum auf Abruf (MUSA) – Museum on Demand, Vienna, Austria
  Schatten und Wirbel, Museum Spoerri, Hadersdorf am Kamp, Austria
  Into Deeper Lands at Open Sea, Magazin, Vienna, Austria

2008  
  Unsichere Räume, Kunstraum Praterstraße 15, Vienna, Austria

2007  
  Yussuf/Cermak (with Lorenz Helfer), Galerie Lisi Hämmerle, Bregenz, Austria*


*Two-artist exhibitions

group shows

2025
  Roots Unseen, Nicodim, Los Angeles, USA

2024
  Becoming The Sea: Black Rock Senegal x Harvey B. Gantt Center, Harvey B. Gantt Center for African-American Arts + Culture, Charlotte, NC, USA
  Vampire::Mother, Anat Ebgi, Los Angeles, USA

2023
  October +, Perrotin, Paris, France

2022
  Somatic Markings, Kasmin, New York City, USA
  The 14th Biennial of Contemporary African Art (Dak’Art), Dakar, Senegal

2021
  My Secret Garden, Asia Art Center, Taipei, China
  Density Betrays Us, The Hole, New York City, USA
  Women in Paris, Eric Hussenot, Paris, France
  Friend Zone, Half Gallery, New York City, USA

2020
  PAPA RAGAZZE!, Nicodim Upstairs, Los Angeles, USA
  Quixotic, Ramp Gallery, London, UK
  When You Waked Up the Buffalo, Nicodim, Los Angeles, USA
  A Peripheral Reverie, Penske Projects, Montecito, USA
  We Used to Gather, Library Street Project, Detroit, USA
  What’s Up Twenty Twenty, Lawrence Van Hagen, London, UK
  New Beginnings..., curated by Katherina Olschbaur, Nicodim [online]
  Hollywood Babylon: A Re-Inauguration of the Pleasure Dome (presented by Jeffrey Deitch, Nicodim, and AUTRE Magazine), Los Angeles, USA

2019
  Kardinal König Prize exhibition, Kunstraum St. Virgil, Salzburg, Austria
  LA on Fire, curated by Michael Slenske, Wilding Cran Gallery, Los Angeles, USA
  Goddess in Practice, Kunstraum Retz, Austria
  Todas Mis Damas, Mexico City, Mexico
  Trans World, Nicodim, Bucharest, Romania, and Nicodim, Los Angeles, USA
  Everlasting Light, Tim Nolas, Vienna, Austria
  Our Lady of the Flowers, Nicodim, Bucharest, Romania

2018
  SEED, curated by Yvonne Force Villareal, Paul Kasmin Gallery, New York City, USA
  BioPerversity, Nicodim, Los Angeles, USA
  Formal Encounters, Nicodim, Bucharest, Romania
  Soft Bodies, Werkartz, Los Angeles, USA

2017
  Galerie M, curated by Bernhard Buhmann, Galerie Z, Hard, Austria
  Pictures of Nothing, curated by Arie Amaya-Akkermans, PG Art Gallery, Istanbul, Turkey
  A Painters Table: Symposium on Painting and Change, curated by Bianca Regl, BLACKBRIDGE OFF, Beijing, China
  "moi non-moi" or "carrying owls to Athens," curated by Amer Abbas and Stefan Bidner, Wiener Art Foundation, Athens, Greece

2016  
  Summer in the City, Galerie Christine König, Vienna, Austria
  Paper doesn´t blush, Αισχύλου 31, Ψυρρή, curated by Stefan Bidner, Wiener Art Foundation, Athens, Greece

2015
  Buchstabenfest, Zollamt, Bad Radkersburg, Austria
  Colour Value Vienna #1, Büro Weltausstellung, Vienna, Austria
  The Katharsis Show, Vienna Art Foundation, Vienna, Austria
  Mujeras Alcanzando la Luz, Casa Museo del Banco National, Panama City, Panama

2014  
  Parallelwelten, Galerie Gerersdorfer, Vienna, Austria
  Die große Illusion, Atelier Steinbrener / Dempf & Huber, Vienna, Austria
  Hier und Jetzt, Habsburgerwohnung, curated by Renate Quehenberger, Vienna, Austria
  Anton Faistauer Prize for Painting exhibition, Galerie im Traklhaus, Salzburg, Austria

2013
  Triangel, Künstlerhaus Palais Thurn und Taxis, Bregenz, Austria
  If sport is the brother of labour, then art is the cousin of unemployment, Camp Art Space, Athens, Greece
  Wie weit willst Du gehen? Pinacoteca, curated by Ursula Maria Probst, Vienna, Austria
  Dada Restaurant, Art Athina, Independent Platform, Athens, Greece
  Picture Show, Alabama Sir Raum, Leipzig 21 Posters by 21 Artists, Magazin Vienna, Vienna, Austria

2012  
  Magic Bus, curated by Tobias Pils, Museum Gironcoli, Vienna, Austria
  Abstraktion und Subtraktion, Galerie Lisa Ruyter, Vienna, Austria
  Predicting Memories, Vienna Art Week, K.K. Telegraphenamt, Vienna, Austria
  Up and Down and Up, VBKÖ, Vienna, Austria
  Paliano, Palais Liechtenstein, Feldkirch, Austria

2011  
  Symbiosis: XI Biennale de la Mediterranée, Thessaloniki, Greece
  From erewhon to who knows when…, curated by Christian Egger, Kunstverein Schattendorf, Austria
  Before the movies the paintings were like the movies, moe, Vienna, Austria
  On Steep Waves, curated by Arie Amaya Akkermans, ReMap 3, Athens, Greece

2010  
  Sweet Anticipation, curated by Övül Durmusoglu, Salzburger Kunstverein, Salzburg, Austria
  Georg Eisler Prize exhibition, Bank Austria Kunstforum, Vienna, Austria
  Nachbilder (with Olivia Kaiser, Stefan Wirnsperger), Galerie Elisabeth Michitsch, Vienna, Austria
  Und immer fehlt mir etwas und das quält mich, Kunstgruppe, Cologne, Germany
  Neue malerische Positionen, Galerie Lukas Feichtner, Vienna, Austria
  MAL X, Kunstraum Goethestraße, Linz, Austria
  Unsichere Räume, Kunstraum flat 1, Vienna, Austria

2009  
  Reden ist Silber Zeigen ist Gold, Atelierhof Kreuzberg, Berlin, Germany
  Games, Kunsthalle Karlsplatz, Vienna, Austria

2006  
  Bon Appetit, Galerie Lisi Hämmerle, Bregenz, Austria
  Real, Kunsthalle Krems, Krems an der Donau, Austria

2003
  R4 Zoom, Galerie im Taxispalais, Innsbruck, Austria

public collections

Angerlehner Museum, Thanlheim bei Wels, Austria
Belvedere 21 Museum of Contemporary Art, Vienna, Austria
Beth Rudin DeWoody Collection, Miami, USA
Black Rock Collection, Lagos, Nigeria
Cc Foundation, Shanghai, China
Collection of the City of Vienna, Austria
Collection of the Province of Vorarlberg, Austria
Institute of Contemporary Art, Miami, USA
Illwerke Collection, Vorarlberg
Longlati Foundation, Shanghai, China
Oskar Kokoschka Centre, University of Applied Arts Vienna, Austria
Pond Society, Shanghai, China
Yageo Foundation, New Taipei City, Taiwan
Yuz Museum, Shanghai, China

awards

2019
  Nominee, Kardinal König Art Prize, Salzburg, Austria

2018
  Painting Prize, Internationale Bodensee Konferenz, Lake Constance, Switzerland

2016  
  Nominee, Kapsch Contemporary Art Prize, Museum moderner Kunst Stiftung Ludwig Wien (mumok) Vienna, Austria

2012  
  Award of Appreciation, Art and Culture Prize, Province of Vorarlberg, Austria

2011
  Start Award, Federal Ministry for Education, Arts and Culture, Vienna, Austria

2009  
  Theodor Körner Prize, Vienna, Austria
  Scholarship award, Anni und Heinrich Sussmann Foundation, Vienna, Austria

2006-2007  
  Travel and research grant (for a project on Bruno Schulz), University of Applied Sciences, Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, Israel

2003
  Honor, Tricky Women Award, Vienna, Austria

RESIDENCIES

2021
  Black Rock Senegal, Dakar, Senegal

2017  
  Red Gate Residency, Bejing, China

2016
  Annexes Bourglingster, Luxembourg

2015  
  CCA Andratx, Mallorca, Spain

2013  
  Arlberg Hospiz Hotel Residency, Tyrol, Austria

2009
  Domus Artium, Paliano, Italy

  • May 30, 2024
    Shadowplay — 6 PAGES

  • April 14, 2023
    NYLON China — 20 PAGES

  • April 6, 2023
    W Magazine — 5 PAGES

  • March 23, 2022
    Contemporary Art Review.la — 7 PAGES

  • January 25, 2022
    Juxtapoz — 3 PAGES

Extract from "Petals in the Mud", essay for Katherina Olschbaur's solo show "Dirty Elements" at Contemporary Arts Center (CAC) Gallery University of California, Irvine (January 11 – March 14, 2020)

by Allyson Unzicker

Katherina Olschbaur’s paintings start as fervently generated sketches and drawings. Dealing with unconscious desire, she applies tactics of Surrealism, creating compositions that meld human bodies, objects, animals, and formal elements. Distorting perspective and proportion, she shifts between representation and abstraction. These dream-scapes are rendered with gestural, expressive strokes that create depth through transparent layering. Olschbaur applies this fluid motion to transfiguring familiar compositions of the Renaissance, Baroque, and Romanticism and deconstructing their overarching narratives. She recomposes these masterworks by identifying their underlying perversions and transforming them into sensual spaces of erotic delight. Olschbaur examines cultural myths—in both the historical and Roland Barthian sense—around gender and patriarchy amidst our current political chaos.

...Olschbaur appropriates from a history of canonized male painters in order to subvert power structures and challenge the conditions and experiences of desire and female sexuality...Frequently, Olschbaur’s figures and landscapes unravel to a point where bodies and their features become obscured or take on surreal proportions. With gestural and disruptive mark making, Olschbaur gives shape to irregularities: limbs go missing, faces blur, and bodies merge into abstract shapes...Olschbaur creates a fictitious space that, rather than proposing escape, is generative and offers a means for contemplating unrealized possibilities.

Extract from essay for Katherina Olschbaur's solo exhibition "Prayers, Divinations" at Nicodim Gallery, New York City, USA (September 7 - October 22, 2022)

by Folasade Ologundudu

...[Olschbaur] combines small portraits with large-scale paintings in her signature surrealist oeuvre, blending figuration and abstraction with sweeping gestural marks. Her drawings, though never included in an exhibition, are integral to Olschbaur's practice, and form the backdrop of her fascination with Renaissance and Baroque-style paintings where themes of religious authority often take center stage. Leaning towards the freedom found in rebellion, she recenters our gaze giving grace and reverence to her figures. Colorful sketches reveal illuminating compositions in luscious oils. Abstract bodies leap off canvases and traverse into dark shadows in a series of electrifying hues. An ensemble of worlds collides where figures blend and reemerge in faraway landscapes only to be unearthed in the recesses of vivid imaginings. The narratives of each work are open ended suggesting layers of memory, lapses in time, and fleeting moments recaptured.

There is a tenderness in Olschbaur's portraiture, an earnestness in her striking use of color. Prayers are asked, answered, and faith is questioned and tested again and again. A sense of tranquility blends with the contrasting vibrancy of her palette. Warm yellows, golds, and soft greens create peaceful scenes that lend themselves to the unconventional beauty of the surreal. Piercing magentas sit comfortably next to cool blues and a dizzying visual effect takes hold. In her approach to oil painting, like the medium itself, Olschbaur slows down, savoring the passage of time over hours, days, and weeks. She reexamines works to uncover hidden mysteries and an underlying moodiness with each new revision. Methodically accessing memories layer by layer, she relishes in her imagination.

...Since her grandmother passed on the last day of her 2021 residency at Black Rock in Dakar, Senegal, Olschbaur has been captivated by notions of death and the transition of life...Deeply rooted in her personal experiences [since 2020] the works..are at once intimate and formal, questioning notions of selfhood and the responsibility of the artist when depicting someone else. For Olschbaur, portraiture is the ultimate prayer and in this exhibition, with which she begs a most pressing question: How can I capture the spirit of another person?

Extract from essay for Katherina Olschbaur's solo exhibition "Midnight Spill" at Perrotin, Hong Kong (March 19 - April 22, 2023)

by Lily Luqi Wang (translated by Athena Zhang)

Although some of Olschbaur’s portraits are based in reality — a friend leaning on a sofa in the studio ('Asuka', 2022-2023), a re-examination of the artist’s self-portrait ('If you want to keep knowing me, you can telephone me now and then', 2022-2023), Rococo ornamentation and the history of drag costume in the 1970s and 1980s ('Purple Gaze', 2022-2023) — the figures she portrays often seem distant and unreachable. Their faces resemble those of religious authorities or Greek statues: they either look directly at the viewer or refuse to interact, their eyes cast downwards. Graceful and detached, they seem to stare at us anyway, regardless of our own gazes.

This otherworldly quality is a result of Olschbaur’s use of light. The artist masks the vibrancy of red, yellow, blue, and purple with a neon-like coolness, akin to the stained-glass magic of a church dispersing and muting natural light; the dazzling glare is infused with a cooler shade, pouring down on the viewers’ upturned faces, turning their complexions into a subtle interplay of light and shadow. For Olschbaur, each color is imbued with a complicated ‘personality’, the result of a myriad of lived episodes, because what has been remembered are “memories of the color and the feelings instead of a specific face or place”. Olschbaur says, “every color creates a certain space that embraces me, feelings I cannot name, very different and complicated mood[s].” Thus, when extreme darkness is juxtaposed with extreme brightness, when “one (color) talks to another”, the artist generalizes and sublimates both ‘ambiance’ and ‘mood’ using a concise visual language.

Since 2006, Olschbaur has gone on a journey from chaos to figuration and, ultimately, to abstraction (turning concrete figures and shapes into abstract forms.) She has now arrived at a destination where her works have defined a point of clarity. Intricate gradients ensure a kind of visual profundity, and familiar contexts become casually recognizable. Instead of rigid cuts and edits from archetypes in historic paintings, all of the figures are strongly grounded in images retrieved from the subconscious. It is therefore hard to trace the actual origin of a given figure, transforming the work into an ‘Olschbaurian resonance’ bearing the marks of Maria Lassnig, R. B. Kitaj, and Miriam Cahn. Countless “small times” are inserted into the painting, reminding us of those sweet, cozy moments we all have experienced. A rainy street is captured by a tiny, unremarkable gray finish on the giant canvas, while the morning glory over the lake behind the characters comes to life against horizontal, colored stripes. Tremors of nature — mild, flat, and impressive — manifest themselves in the slices of life Olschbaur collects. “Looking out of my window now, the sun is setting right on the snow-capped mountain, making me want to go back to painting again.”

Extract from Extract from "SWEET EXPULSION. A purging that gives the body more than it loses." Essay for Katherina Olschbaur's solo exhibition "Sweet Expulsion" at Perrotin, Paris (August 31 - September 21, 2024)

by Mara Hassan

With every marking upon surface, Katherina Olschbaur relinquishes herself increasingly by the stroke to a plane beyond the here and now. A place beyond our pining. Drawing from intimate mythologies, early abstract expressionist tactics, and the autobiographical, her paintings deliver themselves, and us, from our very moment. They are braided scenes of dreams and memories caught in the crossfires of figuration, equally explosive and meditative, equally familiar and foreign. Olschbaur’s visual language is unique in its treatment of color, form, and subject; recurring are deconstructed bodies and sites, clashing seas of gradating hues, and gestural lashes of bright pigments.

2025

Katherina OLSCHBAUR

October 30, 2025 - December 20, 2025

new york

130 Orchard Street

2024

Katherina OLSCHBAUR

August 31, 2024 - September 21, 2024

paris

10 impasse saint claude 75003 Paris

Sweet Expulsion

2023

ELMGREEN & DRAGSET, JR, Koak, Jean-Marie APPRIOU, Iván ARGOTE, Daniel ARSHAM, Genesis BELANGER, Anna-Eva BERGMAN, Sophie CALLE, Julian CHARRIÈRE, Johan CRETEN, Jean-Philippe DELHOMME, Mathilde DENIZE, Lionel ESTÈVE, Jens FÄNGE, Bernard FRIZE, Laurent GRASSO, Vivian GREVEN, Hans HARTUNG, Charles HASCOËT, Thilo HEINZMANN, John HENDERSON, Leslie HEWITT, Gregor HILDEBRANDT, Dora JERIDI, Susumu KAMIJO, Bharti KHER, Klara KRISTALOVA, Georges MATHIEU, Takashi MURAKAMI, Sophia NARRETT, Katherina OLSCHBAUR, Danielle ORCHARD, Jean-Michel OTHONIEL, Paola PIVI, Gabriel RICO, Claude RUTAULT, Emily Mae SMITH, Jesús Rafael SOTO, Josh SPERLING, Tatiana TROUVÉ, Xavier VEILHAN, Bernar VENET, Pieter VERMEERSCH, LEE Bae, QI Zhuo, SHIM Moon-Seup

October 16, 2023 - November 10, 2023

paris

60 RUE DE TURENNE 75003 PARIS
2bis avenue matignon 75008 Paris

Matignon - October+ group show

Katherina OLSCHBAUR

March 19, 2023 - April 22, 2023

hong kong

807, K11 ATELIER Victoria Dockside, 18 Salisbury Road, Tsim Sha Tsui

Midnight Spill
"MIDNIGHT SPILL" AT PERROTIN HONG KONG

"MIDNIGHT SPILL" AT PERROTIN HONG KONG

Katherina OLSCHBAUR

podcasts