Nothing is Ordinary
14 March - 23 May 2020
BBA Gallery, Berlin
Curation & Exhibition Text: Nele Ouwens
Photography: Rick Schubert
Nothing is ordinary once it’s allowed to play its part in a Diana Wolzak sculpture. Take a discarded button as seen through the lens of a Wolzak sculpture – suddenly the found object becomes surprising, different and extraordinary. The artist has been called a ‘Pop Art Shaman’. In Wolzak’s world of small scale assemblages, the everydayness of this mundane yet useful object becomes the embodiment of childhood play, a treasure, a collector’s item, a toy.
No longer wanted or needed objects, such as buttons and broken household or industrial items are Wolzak’s treasure. She spots and gathers up what others cast out, in order to breathe new life into them, frequently combining them with colourful DIY materials purchased from 1-Euro shops. Through her unmonumental sculptures, which are often fragile or precarious in their construction, she redefines our perception of the awe-inspiring.
Wolzak nurtures these cheap throwaway materials into humorous, colourful and playful works of art. Freeing everyday mass production from their function, she allows the mundane to shine beyond their common definition, and creatively redefines their existence. Over time, her works discolour or partly disintegrate, changing the ordinary yet again into something else, something other.
In order to salvage, but also reflect the materiality of her sculptures, Wolzak has been exploring colour, form, texture and content through a series of painstakingly slow and detailed drawings. The drawings have been further developed into smaller and large scale prints. These intensive slow studies are in stark contrast to the chance-like, spontaneity of her sculptures, but yet again transform the work into a new visual language. Just like the new life breathed into found and broken objects, Wolzak‘s art practice is forever evolving.
Embedded in philosophical (phenomenology), personal (giving value to, caring), psychological ( psychotherapy, psychoanalysis), feminist (women’s traditional roles, repetitive cleaning, mending), historical (Arte provera, Pop art, Surrealism) and political (mass consumerism, ecology) narratives, nothing is discarded, everything is explored, redefined, played with, slowly stripped away, and seen through new eyes.
Diana Wolzak is a Dutch artist currently living and working in London and Berlin. Wolzak graduated in Art and Design at Stockwell College of Education and received a BA (Hons) in Fine Art from Central St. Martins School of Art London as well as a Post graduate Diploma in Visual Communication from Goldsmiths College London. Her works are in collections in London, Paris, The Hague and Dubai.