Stay Twice

The Kunstverein Bielefeld, under the new direction of Nadine Droste, is delighted to present Stay Twice, the first institutional solo exhibition in Germany by Beatriz Olabarrieta. Olabarrieta’s work deals with the visual representation of communication and language. It reflects on the relationship between literal and metaphorical meaning, text and materiality, message and sign, in order to examine the standardized, codified and disembodied forms of communication of the information society. Olabarrieta stages texts and signs as messages that do not find their addressees, that fail to make effective statements, or refuse to be concretely assigned. For Bielefeld, in collaboration with Armin Lorenz Gerold, Hendrike Nagel, Romy Kießling and Zach Furniss, Olabarrieta has created a setting with new works extending across the entire Kunstverein. In Stay Twice, objects become figures, symbols become bodies, and signs become characters, so as to open up an imaginative space in which changed contexts of meaning are constituted.

Beatriz Olabarrieta (born in Bilbao, Spain) lives and works in Berlin. Upcoming solo exhibitions include Espai 13, Joan Miró Foundation, Barcelona, Spain (2019), and CentroCentro, Madrid, Spain (2020). Selected recent ones include Ask the Dust, Museum of Contemporary Art Santa Barbara, California, US (2018–19); New Clear Family, Frankfurt am Main, Berlin (2018); The only way out is in, The Sunday Painter, London, UK (2017); Book! Don’t tell me what to do, Parallel Oaxaca, Mexico City, Mexico (2017); Dumb Bells, Saturdays Live, Serpentine Galleries, London, UK (2016). Recent group shows include The Garden Bridge, Brücke-Museum, Berlin (2019); M. Quelque Chose, Les Bains-Douches, Alençon, France (2018); Los Algoritmos Suaves, Centre del Carme, Valencia, Spain (2018).