A.A. Bakhrushin Central State Theatre Museum

Pat Oleszko has a large body--(of work)--laboring heavily under dis-guise, the world is a stooge. Making pedestrian sculpture has been the access to excesses in a variety of situations, subversions and insinuations. Her work in the popular art forums of the street, party, restaurant, burlesque house, beauty contest, sporting event and parades have lead to the more proscribed forums of the one-person snow, film, conventions, installation, weddings, and spatial events. Oleszko has worked in scale from special performances at the Museum of Modern Art, to her annual appearance in the Easter parade in New York (although her performances have been greeted with no little malevolence by the local police.) In addition to making a spectacle of herself, she has costumed trees, knees, fountains, breasts, butts, elephants and index fingers as commensurate characters for performance. Her inflated sense of self has also created myriad pneumatic sculptures that range from costume to a 55 foot rocket ship. Chosen as part of the US cultural presentation at the 1980 Lake Placid Winter Olympics (as comic relief), she has continuously toured the US, Canada, Europe and Japan in the past years, performing at museums, galleries, colleges and theaters. Oleszko's magazine appearances cover a similar range, from art-tickles in Penthouse and Esquire to cover girl for Ms (as the Statue of Liberty), as well as features from Artforum to Sesame Street. She has made about 40 short films and has sure enjoyed a variety of grants and awards including Fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, The New York Foundation of the Arts, the Guggenheim and the DAAD to live in Brrrrlin for a year. Recently, she received the NY Dance and Performance Award for Sustained Achievement (a Bessie) and was twice nominated for the New York Theater Wing (Tony) Award. In 1999 she was a Rome Prize winner and was then invited back as a repeat offender disparately sneaking the las' laugh.

Designer Gallery

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