CULTURE
Gazelli Art House to present Olympia Scarry`s "Self Graph" exhibition
Baku, September 17 (AZERTAC). Gazelli Art House Baku will present Olympia Scarry`s "Self Graph" exhibition.
Olympia Scarry is a Swiss artist, she lives and works in New York. Scarry`s discipline in Psychology is always a driving force in her works as in her new body of work, which focuses on the examination of reality and the self. Scarry has, to date, exhibited in group shows at the Barbican, Art Basel Miami and the Venice Biennale, and has mounted a solo show at The Conduits in Milan.
There are some rather flagrant contradictions and identity loopholes to Olympia Scarry. She`s a London-based artist, she`s not really British. Born in Geneva, she`s the second grand-daughter of famed children`s book author and illustrator Richard Scarry. Her father, who followed Scarry Sr. into the children`s book business, moved the girls to the French countryside when Olympia was four years old, then to a Venice palazzo for half a decade, and later, when she was a teenager, to New York City. This is only the beginning of Scarry`s nomadic existence, but we`ll get back to that. The second paradox is her artwork. It`s a bit of a shock to learn that her preferred artistic materials are mainly heavy industrial matter—cables, motors, mirrors, and fluorescent lights. Scarry`s transition into adulthood may explain some of her more psychologically beguiling activities. She began high school in Manhattan, at the Convent of the Sacred Heart, an uptown girls` school known for graduating a full spectrum of boldfaced blondes, from the Hilton sisters to Lady Gaga. Several friends from those years who remain close confidants tell me that even when she lived abroad, Scarry maintained her New York style—a Goth demeanor and, according to at least one friend, a spiked dog collar. After high school, she moved to Paris and later London to study psychology, incorporating art classes into her coursework. Her first solo show was held at the Conduits Gallery in Milan earlier this year. She`s now at work on an ambitious show at London`s 20 Hoxton Square Project set for this winter. A reserved young woman, she told me during our chat last June—in Berkeley Square on a perfect London day—that her art is about peeling back her own layers as well as working out what she considers her biggest mental leap: falling in love.