Never Act in Haste is the title of the first solo show of Marija Olšauskaitė (Vilnius 1989) at the gallery. The title mirrors the artist’s thoughts and responds in a silent way to Marija´s own personal manifest.

Viscous liquified ideas flow slowly in the artist’s mind until they solidify under the shape of weirdly beautiful organic glass structures. As in a David Cronenberg film the sculptures seem to have a life of their own. Appearing like objects we do not recognize as familiar, as if they’ve been tele-transported to the present from an indeterminate future.

New forms and shapes disguised under old known materials like glass resonate with the most prosaic but not less important history of the traditional glass industry in post war Lithuania.

Intimacy remains central in the artist’s practice, also in the way we communicate and elaborate our social bonds in this more complicated society.

This is perhaps one of the reasons Marija´s sculptural works might remind us of pre-formed elements as if the artist expected these object to reach their final stage once they are delivered at the exhibition space under the scrutiny of the viewers perception. It seems that only then the transformative alchemy of the materials will be detained and will freeze under the more banal gaze of the reality.

Marija Olšauskaitė (b. 1989, Lithuania) lives and works in Vilnius. Her solo exhibitions include Song Sing Soil (with Eglė Budvytytė), Vleeshal, Middelburg (2023); Witness on our behalf, Contemporary Art Centre, Vilnius (2019); and Marija & Petras Olšauskai: Miss Bird, Art in General, New York City (2014), among others. Olšauskaitė participated in group exhibitions internationally, including The Milk of Dreams, the 59th International Art Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia (2022); and suddenly it all blossoms, RIBOCA2, Riga International Biennial of Contemporary Art (2020); Homegrown, Hauser & Wirth, online (2020); I walk the night, PM8/Francisco Salas, Vigo (2019); Joy and Mirror. Port city, Fourtoseven gallery, Riga (2016); and Karaoke Police, Kunstverein, Amsterdam (2015), Nomas, Rome (2014), Contemporary Art Centre, Vilnius (2013), among others.

In October 2024 she will have her first solo show in France at Musée Carré d´Art Nîmes and she will also participate at the show “Les frontières sont des animaux nocturnes” curated by Emilie Villez and Neringa Bumbliene at Le Palais de Tokyo and Kadist in Paris.