The Magnificent Seven: Paulina Olowska
Sesum fo L’lab
Residency: September 7 – December 17, 2010
Presentation: Saturday, December 4, 2010, 7–10 p.m.
at Potrero Hill Neighborhood House in San Francisco
California College of the Arts
1111 Eighth Street
San Francisco CA 94107-2247
T 415.551.9210
Over the course of the fall 2010 semester, Olowska collaborated with a class of CCA students on the making of “extroverted self-portraits.” Thinking about common processes in contemporary art such as copying, juxtaposing, collaging, imitating, and mimicking, the class considered how it might be possible to build self-representations based not on internal expressions but rather on exterior objects and ideas: found tales, known personalities, places, stories, and myths. In other words, muses.
Olowska invited five guests—the artists Sarah Crowner, Susanne M. Winterling, and Mathilde Rosier, the writer Jan Verwoert, and the curator Monika Szewczyk—to San Francisco to collaborate with her on this project. Sesum fo L’lab is the final result. The title is a reversal of “Ball of Muses,” which was Olowska’s original concept for the culmination of the course. Through costume, sound, music, performance, and sculptural interventions, Olowska and the students have articulated, abstracted and unwoven, and then rematerialized, their inspirational sources in the form of a one-night-only costume ball.
The participating CCA students are Melissa Dickenson, William Emmert, Matthew Endler, Michele Fiedler, Rebekah Goldstein, Kevin Krueger, Blaz Pirnat, and Denise Silver.
About The Magnificent Seven
September 2009 marked the launch of The Magnificent Seven at the CCA Wattis Institute for Contemporary Arts. The seven participating international artists are Abraham Cruzvillegas, Harrell Fletcher, Ryan Gander, Renata Lucas, Kris Martin, Paulina Olowska, and Tino Sehgal. Over a three-year period they are being integrated into every aspect of the institution’s structure and activities. Each one presents a solo exhibition, completes a Capp Street Project artist residency, produces a publication, teaches a number of courses as a CCA faculty member, delivers a public lecture, and participates in other aspects of the Wattis’s programming.
About the CCA Wattis Institute
The Wattis Institute for Contemporary Arts was established in 1998 in San Francisco at California College of the Arts. It serves as a forum for the presentation and discussion of international contemporary art and curatorial practice. Through groundbreaking exhibitions, the Capp Street Project residency program, lectures, symposia, and publications, the Wattis Institute has become one of the leading art institutions in the United States and an active site for contemporary culture in the Bay Area.
CCA Wattis Institute for Contemporary Arts
California College of the Arts
1111 Eighth Street
San Francisco CA 94107-2247
T: 415.551.9210
www.wattis.org
*Image above:
Courtesy the artist.
