Skip to Content

The Arts Intel Report

Paulina Olowska and Deborah Turbeville: Widows of the Wind

Paulina Olowska, Icy Water, 2024.

Until Feb 22, 2025
Quai des Bergues 15, 1201 Genève, Switzerland

In paintings as evocative in their storytelling as scenes by the Old Masters, the Polish multi-media artist Paulina Olowska unleashes the female gaze on European history, contemporary American pop culture, and motifs from fashion photography. Olowska draws inspiration from female artists of the past and her muse of the moment is the late Deborah Turbeville, who began her career as an editor at Harper’s Bazaar and evolved into a fashion photographer of mysterious historicism. Pace Gallery’s Geneva location places Olowska and Turbeville in conversation, featuring four photographs Turbeville shot for Vogue Russia in the 1990s alongside Olowska’s recent paintings of ornately dressed women in snow-covered, Eastern European landscapes. Through Old World settings and the clothing of past centuries, both women touch poignantly on themes of femininity, consumerism, and the passage of time. —Lucy Horowitz

© Paulina Olowska, courtesy Pace Gallery, photography by Alina Lefa