Paulina Olowskaʼs small, ceramic sculpture, Bus Stop, holds within its form a tension between high and low forms of art production. On the one hand, the work’s form recalls that of a modernist pavilion with its flat, horizontal roof, and yet its dioramic size and rough sculpturing out of clay simultaneously position the work within the field of traditional crafts. This tension is emblematic of Olowskaʼs practice; her paintings, collages, and ceramics engage with traditional Polish crafts, feminism, the historical avant-garde, while incorporating a vocabulary that is distinctly modernist. The formation of an object such as Bus Stop is also a gesture towards the denoted function of this structure, which is not only made redundant due to the size of Olowskaʼs sculpture, but its material also subverts the structure itself by placing it within the cultural and historical vernacular of a traditional craft context.

Hans Ulrich Obrist, 2015 (translation: Virginia Dellenbaugh)