Rhys Ziemba

Romantic Comedy

January 3 — 31, 2025

New York City: 41 Orchard Street, Lower Level

VIEW WORKS

Olympia is proud to present Romantic Comedy, Rhys Ziemba’s inaugural exhibition with the gallery. Included are ten new oil paintings in which, for the first time, the artist populates his environment-driven compositions with animals—human and otherwise.

Ziemba’s urban landscapes evoke works such as Caspar David Friedrich’s The Sea of Ice and Contemplating the Moon series, as well as Pieter Bruegel the Elder’s Netherlandish Proverbs, while also drawing from traditions found in Medieval books of hours and large-format Japanese architectural landscapes. Rather than imposing moral judgments or seeking universal truths, Ziemba’s paintings emphasize curiosity, contingency, humor, and decay—imperfect, honest circumstances.

Each composition in Romantic Comedy is meticulously rendered, often including multiple miniature worlds within a single view. Driven by introspection, observation, and—most notably—invention, Ziemba highlights the ironic juxtaposition of transcendence and decay. The paintings normalize waste, integrating it as an almost transparent element of the urban landscape, attended to with the same priority as a mountain range or horizon line.

On New Year's Eve of 2023, Ziemba received the life-changing news that he and his partner were expecting a baby. This momentous revelation coincided serendipitously with the creation of the first painting in this series, a connection Ziemba finds both profound and incidental. The experience of pregnancy and the birth of their child in late August 2024 folded its way into the conception of each painting. Aspirational unions between living and built environments emphasize an awareness of our constructed world. The line between the two is meandering and increasingly blurred, as the contrast between beauty and detritus becomes less distinct the more they merge.

Rhys Ziemba (b. 1981, Webster Springs, West Virginia) is a self-taught painter and musician based in Ocean Hill, Brooklyn.

Working from his home studio, Ziemba transforms urban iconographies into expansive contemporary landscapes, exploring the tensions between spontaneity and deliberation. His practice navigates a balance between technical precision and expressive gesture, where trash, architecture, bodies, and geological formations are considered with equanimity.

Solo exhibitions include Thomas Van Dyke Gallery (Brooklyn, NY, 2024), KIPNZ (Walton, NY, 2023), Artcake (Brooklyn, NY, 2022), and James Fuentes Gallery (New York, NY, 2021, online). Recent group exhibitions include Diana (New York, NY, 2024), Artists for Kamala (online, 2024), and Swanson Kuball (Long Island City, NY, 2023).