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Rafal Olbinski: New Dreams of Old Values
Harbert Gallery and Gallery C
December 13, 2008 - February 28, 2009
New Dreams of Old Values, an exhibition of recent work by noted painter, printmaker and
illustrator Rafal Olbinski will be at Jule Collins Smith Museum of Fine Art December 13, 2008 through February 28, 2009.
Born in Poland in 1945 and now living in New York, Olbinski is widely recognized as an important contemporary surrealist artist. Although that characterization does not fully describe Olbinski’s distinctive art, his mesmerizing imagery is indeed reminiscent of the ground-breaking work by early 20th-century Surrealists Max Ernst, Man Ray, and especially René Magritte—conveying unusual ideas through extraordinary juxtapositions, visual non sequiturs, the element of surprise, and compelling painterly technique.
New Dreams of Old Values, organized by the museum in cooperation with Sherri and Kenneth Nahan and Patinae, Inc., builds upon a series of paintings commissioned by the German periodical Stern. Olbinski’s images, rendered for reproduction in the magazine, addressed issues of ethics and morality in the modern world. The exhibition in Auburn features the artist’s recent musings on the subject, redeveloped as finished easel paintings. The exhibition is augmented by selected study drawings and a collection of Olbinski’s printed posters.
A student of architecture at the Warsaw University of Technology, Olbinski immigrated to the United States in 1981 and quickly established himself as a prominent painter, illustrator, and designer. His inventive and highly evocative imagery soon appeared in publications such as Atlantic Monthly, New York Times, New Yorker, Newsweek, and Time magazine. Besides producing work for periodicals, Olbinski has created numerous poster illustrations for opera productions, live theatre, and music festivals around the world. He has garnered more than 150 awards for such work, including Gold and Silver Medals from the Art Directors Club of New York, the Society of Illustrators in both New York and Los Angeles, and similar honors in England, France, and Italy.
In addition to his considerable body of illustration and graphic art, Olbinski continues to produce numberous fine art parintings and murals, and has held more than 30 one-man shows during the last decade in the United States, Belgium, Chile, Germany, Japan and Poland. His paintings are included in the collections of the National Arts Club, the Smithsonian Institution, the U.S. Library of Congress and the Suntory museum in Osaka, Japan, as well as in numerous private and corporate collections worldwide.
