ALYSSA KLAUER

DARE ME

Curated by Maria Vogel

July 7 - August 11, 2021

Olympia is pleased to present Dare Me, a solo exhibition of work by Alyssa Klauer curated by Maria Vogel.

Alyssa Klauer’s work summons in worlds that exist in alternative realms, not entirely dissimilar to our own human existence, but full of more mysticism and enchantment than we encounter on this planet. Viewing Klauer’s work is akin to taking a walk through the visual landscape of her imagination. Various elements ground the work in a human experience and give the viewer access points to jump into a plane where intrigue and mystery permeate your psyche. Klauer cleverly employs exaggerated formal elements, bestowing upon the viewer a narrative puzzle which is as open-ended as it is definitive.

Tropes of girlhood and hyper-femininity play out the performance of how the ideal female archetype has been defined for centuries. Rather than letting these hyperbolic motifs exist on their own, Klauer turns the essence of each painting on its head through a queer lens. By adding in layers of action and movement across the surface, she changes the traditional girlhood narrative and makes it her own.

Klauer’s keen awareness of art history plays a key role while she’s creating. Elements from the Rococo and Renaissance periods, such as putto and sculpture-like fragments, find a new home among ties to modern-day existence. Klauer plays with symbols that have dual meanings, while very intentionally placing every visual element that arrives before your eyes. Taken as a whole, the work welcomes humor and absurdity, making light of emotions that can weigh heavy.

The title of the show refers to the in-between moment in which Klauer’s paintings reside, one that is of equal duality between our inner and external worlds. Recognizing our reality as a shared lived experience while at the same time, completely unique to the individual, Klauer constructs “non-spaces” that transition between these opposing spheres. While you tiptoe between the known and unknown, you are both enticed or dared to jump into unfamiliar territory.

With Dare Me, Klauer’s first solo exhibition with Olympia, we are given a body of work that proves the artist’s skill at playing with various formal techniques while maintaining thoughtful rationale throughout. While Klauer’s work is made in homage to human experience personal to her, it transcends into a universal understanding that binds together the masses. Made over the course of 2020 and 2021, the work adeptly displays the vast terrain of Klauer’s mind which was methodically sifted through during a period of global isolation.

Alyssa Klauer is a painter based in Brooklyn, New York. She received her BFA from the Maryland Institute College of Art in 2017 and her MFA from the Cranbrook Academy of Art in 2019. Klauer has been awarded the 2021 TOY Foundation Fellowship alongside the 2021-2022 NXTHVN Studio Fellowship. Her work has been exhibited at the Museum of Museums in Seattle, Fredericks and Freiser Gallery and Sean Kelly Gallery in New York, among others. She has attended residencies at the Vermont Studio Center, Grin City Collective, The Chautauqua Institution, and NYU Steinhardt. Klauer's work has been written about in New American Paintings, Two Coats of Paint, and The New York Times. Her work meditates on “Queer Time,” the idea that Queer individuals often experience a delayed or second adolescence when encountering time-bending experiences such as coming out later in life.