DOES YOUR CENTER HAVE A SLIPSTREAM?

Audrey Bialke and Olivia Oyamada

Lane Meyer Projects is pleased to present Does your center have a slipstream?, a two-person exhibition featuring artworks by Audrey Bialke and Olivia Oyamada

June 14, 2024 - August 4, 2024

Opening Reception: June 14, 8pm - Late

For Immediate Release:

Lane Meyer Projects is pleased to announce Does your center have a slipstream?, a two-person exhibition by Ithaca, NY-based artist Audrey Bialke and Bend, OR- based artist Olivia Oyamada. Together, the line between the magical and the mundane is unearthed and reimagined to its full mystical potential.

The paintings of Audrey Bialke read like Medieval manuscripts, moving through centuries to capture a balance of the natural world and human invention. With her fantastical animals juxtaposed with modern manufactured objects, Bialke’s works present a rich bouquet of imagery to ponder, capturing the musings of a logical mind that actively questions reality. Tucked into the forested wilds of the Finger Lakes region of Central New York, Bialke treats her canvases like cauldrons that capture different fragments through time, from ornate borders borrowed from illuminated manuscripts to otherworldly nighttime creatures that glow like vintage Uranium glass.

From another plane of existence, the hybrid animals of Olivia Oyamada play out their rituals in riverbeds, treetops, and over the occasional bisected carcass. Intuited in an effort to capture a personal mythology or folklore, beings composed of unlikely components - insect and mammal or biped and wheel - act as Kami, or personal deities in the Shinto faith native to Japan. Many of Oyamada’s beasts possess a twoness to them, representing multiple truths, much like the artist herself. Of mixed race descent, Oyamada and her mischievous Kami travel through chaos, death, and rebirth, side by side.
For true believers, there is far more than meets the eye in Does your center have a slipstream?. Layered and unique, each artist incorporates inspired elements into their works as if collecting ingredients for a spell. Creating playfully but with purpose, Audrey Bialke and Olivia Oyamada manifest their angels and demons alike.

Written by Marsha Mack

All purchase inquiries to: lanemeyerprojects@gmail.com

Audrey Bialke is a painter based in rural Ithaca, NY. Her representational paintings consider our long intertwined relationships with creatures and plants both real and imagined. She draws inspiration from and recontextualizes imagery from illuminated manuscripts and historical illustrations. Her work has been exhibited at venues including the SPRING/BREAK Art Show in New York, NY (2022/2023); RAINRAIN in New York, NY (2024); and Soft Times gallery in San Francisco, CA (2024).

Olivia Oyamada  (b. 1994) is a Japanese-American, self-taught surrealist painter and sculptor. Her work is concerned with noticing the magic and spiritual significance in the everyday mundane. She creates worlds that are representational of the slightly angelic, slightly demonic sacred and unspoken nuance of being a human. This production of personal mythology is meant as a grounding prayer to create a home for the abandoned aspects of our psyche. Like a found rock with ineffable value or a cloud in the sky that has sudden meaning, she collects these images to offer to you. Originally a tattoo artist and farmer, she is inspired by the lineage of folk art. She currently resides and works in Chicago and Oregon.

All photos taken by Erynn McConnell