Little big woman By Ron Ehmke It sometimes seems like contemporary American art (and film, music, literature, and so on) comes in just two sizes: big-budget epic or teensy-weensy indie, full-volume thrash or quiet singer-songwriter confessional, thousand-page novel or one-paragraph flash fiction. By contrast, one of the many things that has long amazed and delighted me about NYC-based performance artist Pat Oleszko’s work is the way she thinks on a giant scale without ever losing sight of the personal. Oleszko’s wildly inventive, wickedly funny shows grab your attention from the get-go with their way-over-the-top mix of outrageous costumes, fast-paced films and videos, and huge inflatable sculptures (a technique she perfected many years before blow-up Santas began popping up on suburban lawns across America). At the same time, there’s a human scale to everything she does: it’s all homemade, and the stories she tells withher supersized props and outfits are frequently first-person accounts of her adventures, enriched by shrewd political insight. (Past Buffalo visits chronicled her travels through Cold War Germany and life in downtown Manhattan in the days following 9/11, along with a raunchy retelling of Homer’s Odyssey that began in a Greek diner.) Puns, both verbal and visual, abound; Oleszko has practically invented her own language, which is itself both a brazen act and a throwaway gesture. Here, for instance, is part of her tease about what to expect from her return to Hallwalls this month: “clothes calls and cunning stunts—a performantz by pat oleszko, who is solidly anti gravity / and the ms tricks of dis guise, in a flamboyant adventure of jest, artin’ around / with plenty to look at and / a place to sit down.” (I just had a moment of panic thinking about how well that’s going to survive the watchful eyes of our proofreaders.) Put it this way: how many other artists can you name who have appeared in the pages of Playgirl, Ms., Sesame Street Magazine, and Artforum? That’s a lot of ground to cover—not unlike the stage of Asbury Hall in the Church (341 Delaware Ave.), which she’s bound to fill with friendly giants on March 9 and 10. For details, call 854-1694 or visit www.hallwalls.org. For sneak previews of Oleszko in action, check out her own site, www.patoleszko.com. —Ron Ehmke Back to the Table of Contents Back to Top