It is often when we find ourselves mistaking the map for the territory that a series of drawn out and slow pauses and shifts in thought begin to occur. Olson is interested in these moments - when circumstances and their aftermaths become unfamiliar, unresolved, unanswered, recounted and still not understood. Rather than seeking clarity or certainty for why such moments come to exist, through the process of structuring and restructuring materials and forms Olson wants to create subtle yet systemic spaces where formalism can be afforded to incidental spaces or materials. Her aim is to be anonymous enough to move beyond the personal or situational and exist as unassuming contemplations on material, space, form, and movement within a non-representational, shifting and rhythmic landscape.
In her current body of work, "Platonic Folds and How to Make Sense of a Canyon," Olson uses common, often bland, materials to probe for movement and anomalistic meaning in a place, material or form. The topographies depicted are not real or representative of a specific location or point in time. They exist more like metaphors of lost thoughts and inconclusive ruminations. The imagery is drawn from geologic formations, rock folds, shifting shorelines - surfaces of a slow history. For most of this work, the color is created through the build-up of a large amount of layers of either material or a repetitive process encouraging the material to waiver between being itself and being something else. Olson is intrigued by a process of spending a substantial amount of time investigating and responding to a materials' unpredictability and reaching a moment where she begins to think she understands its' properties only to realize that her understanding is not complete and rests within the threshold of representation and abstraction, movement and stasis, shallowness and depth.
Rather than trying to find a particular magic model that will answer questions or explain things we universally may not know, Olson is interested in the data of the in-between, the reality that occurs when what we think we know and experience collide and exist; regardless of making perfect sense. Olson has come to appreciate the moments where she can respond to the material in use and work to get closer to a moment where that material or space seems to transcend itself, if only for a moment.
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