B. Ingrid Olson at fluent

Artist: B. Ingrid Olson

Exhibition title: Pleasure Traffic

Venue: fluent, Santander, Spain

Date: September 29 – November 24, 2023

Photography: all images copyright and courtesy of the artist and fluent, Santander

“Matter and meaning are not separate elements. They are inextricably fused together, and no event, no matter how energetic, can tear them asunder.”[1].

Pleasure Traffic invites us to engage with a segmented space which is not only at odds with the linear convention of perception but also with the experience of time itself. The installation materialises a form of withholding in which our bodies cannot fully relate to the space in its usual, open configuration. By rearranging the existing accessibility of fluent’s transparent pavilion–like space, what was previously visually available through a panoramic gaze, stands now as three separated rooms that cannot be seen nor physically accessed simultaneously. This architectural gesture shapes its identity along with a set of objects and images that frustrate satisfaction. Making analogies to wider structural configurations—material, social, ideological, physiological, psychological, or spiritual—we are confronted with how, as subjects, we might encounter, dissolve into, or be prohibited within, a continuum of spaces, perspectives and temporalities.

This compartmentation is intrinsically entangled with a sense of loss, a feeling of radical importance to personal politics today. When the hyper-availability and continuity promised by the capitalist fantasy filters into the individual, the possibility of an unproductive pleasure becomes a mere contingency. By contrast, Olson’s installation constructs an ecology of gestures in which loss is no longer contingent but rather constitutive of desire. This focus on the gratification found in restraint presents a new kind of experience where Olson looks at pleasure in the limitations not only of the present but also of a speculative future.

The two walls that divide the space create a narrow central corridor that functions as a point of uncanny attraction, choreographing viewers’ bodies while hindering a collective experience. This axial element creates a kind of negative space at the heart of the exhibition that throws desire into contradiction; perforates matter; and amplifies embodied subjectivity. Viewers become visitors, oscillating between exercising their own agency to enter the three spaces and, once inside, submitting to the environment, becoming a part of the installation, included within and framed by the exhibition itself.

Circling endlessly around the space, our bodies reveal that many kinds of negation are central to the formation of our subjectivity. The mutuality and dependence resulting from the configuration of the space dismantles the dichotomy between protective containment and prohibitive constraint. Through this friction, Olson instigates a corporeal-architectural interaction in which what is absent is not the obstacle to desire, but its aim.

B. Ingrid Olson lives and works in Chicago. Recent solo exhibitions include Cast of Mind at i8 Grandi, Reykjavík; History Mother and Little Sister, at the Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts and Elastic X at Secession, Vienna. She has participated in group exhibitions at the Institute of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, (2021); The Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, (2021) and The Museum of Modern Art, MoMa, New York (2018).

[1] Karen Barad, Meeting the Universe Halfway: Quantum Physics and the Entanglement of Matter and Meaning. (Duke University Press, 2007).

B. Ingrid Olson, Pleasure Traffic, 2023, exhibition view, fluent, Santander. Courtesy of the artist and fluent. Photograph: Ander Sagastiberri

B. Ingrid Olson, Psycho something interior, picture opened to the outside, 2014-2023 Inkjet print, laser print, transparency, double-sided tape, dirt, staple. Courtesy of the artist and fluent. Photograph: Ander Sagastiberri

B. Ingrid Olson, Psycho index, 2022-2023. Xerox, internal dye diffusion transfer print, laser print, transparency, staple Courtesy of the artist and fluent. Photograph: Ander Sagastiberri

B. Ingrid Olson, Psycho index, 2013-2023 Silicone, laser print, transparency, wrapping paper, ink, masking tape, lining fabric, staple. Courtesy of the artist and fluent. Photograph: Ander Sagastiberri

B. Ingrid Olson, Psycho index, 2021-2023 Laser print, lithographic print, fabric, sandpaper, staple Courtesy of the artist and fluent. Photograph: Ander Sagastiberri

B. Ingrid Olson, Pleasure Traffic, 2023, exhibition view, fluent, Santander. Courtesy of the artist and fluent. Photograph: Ander Sagastiberri

B. Ingrid Olson, Camera [A weird rewriting of negative capability?], 2019-2023 Patinated steel, bull blinder, iron, c-print, inkjet print, laser print, plastic, and lining fabric. Courtesy of the artist and fluent. Photograph: Ander Sagastiberri

B. Ingrid Olson, Pleasure Traffic, 2023, exhibition view, fluent, Santander. Courtesy of the artist and fluent. Photograph: Ander Sagastiberri

B. Ingrid Olson, Wall Condition: Lamp Channel, Three as One, 2023 Drywall, latex paint, aluminum, screws

B. Ingrid Olson, I, I, I, [open], n.d. Unprotected stamped steel, light socket and fitting, electrical wiring, light bulb, galvanized steel conduit. Courtesy of the artist and fluent. Photograph: Ander Sagastiberri

B. Ingrid Olson, Pleasure Traffic, 2023, exhibition view, fluent, Santander. Courtesy of the artist and fluent. Photograph: Ander Sagastiberri

B. Ingrid Olson, Living Painting, 2015-2023 Gouache, library catalog card, laser print, transparency, staple. Courtesy of the artist and fluent. Photograph: Ander Sagastiberri

B. Ingrid Olson, Pleasure Traffic, 2023, exhibition view, fluent, Santander. Courtesy of the artist and fluent. Photograph: Ander Sagastiberri

B. Ingrid Olson, Camera [Sluice], 2017-2023. Patinated steel, bull blinder, iron, inkjet print, laser print plastic, and lining fabric. Courtesy of the artist and fluent. Photograph: Ander Sagastiberri