Pat’s Got Hats

Pat Oleszko (2024) installation view of assorted paper hats.

By JOHN DRURY July 19, 2024

Some makers give it their everything, free of search for approval, or any desire at all really, to appease those at the metaphorical “gate”- but insist instead, to make some sort of end-run around supposed “proper”; for goals held lofty and personal. Thank goodness, that there still exists (if seemingly rare) a radical element in the visual arts. In this age of rabid cancellation - that, via the easily butt-hurt - it seems indeed rarer, and rarer yet each day, that makers are willing to ruffle any feathers, for fear of falling off of the lap of monied support; that practice as enabled by a gallery system increasingly tethered to the wallet. Somebody has to pay for those dealer forays, to exotic fair locales, largely parties. The pool of risk-takers, is indeed now shallow.

Where are the Golub’s, in this time of blatant warfare’s atrocity, the Wojnarowicz in times of disease, the Holzers…the muckrakers? It’s not enough to be black, and simply depict blacks, or queer, only to wave the rainbow flag - these folks only preaching to the choir - another form of exclusion, as the pendulum swings to its other cliquish extreme. I see only a “Concern Light”, in imagery and in action (it’s less-filling) - “Hey look, I’ve painted a boat, I must care about the water…and here, what is essentially a color field abstraction, but it’s queer, because I say so. It’s bullshit, and an artist like Pat Oleszko returns to a New York City solo presentation after a 30 absence, at the David Peter Francis Gallery – a fresh space downtown at the heart of Chinatown, in just the knick of time. If Pat’s is our example then, the old-guard, is the new guard in conceptually driven substance.

Pat Oleszko (1977) “The Padettes of P.O. Town, The Primary Colored Group”; fabric, fiberfill, leather and wood, 74x49x27 inches.

Is it simply activism, that has lost its edge? Or has social media so brainwashed, so desensitized the young makers, that in a low, or no attention-span fog, there is an inability to deviate from a supposed (and desired?) norm? Has this demonstration a day mentality, become merely fashionable - “cause” only the place to be seen, in selfie opportunity and backdropped in face-painted masquerade and informant. Has the cloning now, of MAGA dullards begun, in earnest? Is tik-tok driven desensitization complete; truth passe’?

Pat Oleszko is no stranger to the bunched undies and tousled hair the naysayer; the patina of time, toughening the skin. By way impeccable craftmanship, the ephemeral of costume, and sheer wit, she employs her body as site of protest. But in deviation the customary play-by-play, piece-by-piece, stroking of egos and salesmanship, that show reviews have too often become - I will implore only, that you get by this retrospective exhibition, to see how “it” might be done, how stick by your guns, shoot from the hip making, might in the end, service beyond the self and to the betterment of society as a whole. There is at the David Peter Francis Gallery the historical, the documentary, the present. Know please, your history, and your history makers as might be present to both historical, and present concerns. Revolution never comes, via the silver spoon. Know please, the potential of unleashed possibility, in rebellion. WM