Bursting at the Seams

An inflatable costume made of red and white breasts, aptly titled Udder Delight, 1989, strikes a pose between two complimentary columns at David Peter Francis in New York. Elsewhere, A Womb with a View, 1990, a room-sized woman’s body (also inflatable) has crawl space between its legs. Inside, hangs the self-explanatory Candy Stripped Cock, 1996. These humorous and visually striking wearable soft sculptures are the life’s work of Pat Oleszko.

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Detroit-born, New York-based Oleszko burst onto the avant-garde scene in New York in the early ‘70s, and has shown her work in dozens of exhibitions and staged well over 200 performances around America since, averaging approximately six events a year in the last decade. A look through her resume reveals a tongue-in-cheek timeline of the country’s various social, economic, environmental, and political situations over the years—including a series of shows criticizing the Trump presidency and an earlier performance in response to 9/11. The artist predicts she has made over 80 inflatable costumes, and a look at her resume shows an impressive 45 films credited to her name.

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Yet despite her prolific output, “Pat’s Imperfect Present Tense,” which opens this Saturday and runs until July 20, is the multidisciplinary artist’s first solo show in New York since the ‘90s. “Up until this point, I have done every single thing by myself,” she emphasizes. “I design the pieces; I make them; I carry them up and down four flights of stairs; I book my own shows.” The outside support is a welcome turn of events for the artist, an artworld debut long overdue.

Inside David Peter Francis you’ll see a smorgasbord of large, fantastical sculptures from over the artist’s idiosyncratic career, ones that skewer and celebrate the world in which they spring forth from. There is a giant inflatable penis, a suite of flora and fauna, a “knee-o-fashin” set of animated legs, and the dress made up of breasts that looks like a Yayoi Kusama painting on acid.

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Naturally, the exhibition begins in the gallery before spilling out into the empty space next door as well as its foyer. “The show has grown organically, kind of like a mushroom,” says the artist who has a proclivity for speaking—and naming her works—in puns and once perfectly summed up her work as the “wild and wooly.” She continues: “The more you befuddle people, the more interested they become. Either that or they just bail out completely, so you have to have some kind of control over it.”

To call Oleszko a performance artist would be to overlook her vast catalog of films as well as the legs her costumes grow long after they take their final bow on stage. “I’m an artist who performs,” she says, “who makes elaborate costumes and props and language and accouterments to put on these shows.” 

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The idea that she could wear her work started while she was an art student at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor in the late ‘60s. For her first major piece, she sewed and stuffed a nude body and climbed into it like a mascot. Next, following a class prompt to make a present for a motorcycle-loving teacher’s assistant with the wrapping inherent, she fashioned a belt with giant nails and chains and whips and buried it in a coffin behind the campus building. “I gave him a shovel and told him to dig it,” she says. “That was the first time that I realized that how you thought could be reflected in what you were wearing.” 

In the decades sense, she has made a 60-foot- tall rocket ship, ginormous feet of the Wicked Witch protruding from a cabin in the woods, Rudolph's red nose to be pushed by the artist in a Christmas tree costume, a crocodile eating a man-shaped American flag, phallic totems, colorful characters and political caricatures. For a 1990 performance entitled Nora's Art, the artist emerged from between the legs of the large, inflatable woman now on display at David Peter Francis. In another, Bluebeard’s Hassle: The Writhes of the Wives, 1989, the result of research on a serial murder and the seven deadly sins, inflatables like Udder Delight bloomed like flowers on stage.

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When Oleszko’s archives exceed her two-and-a-half storage units, she selects costumes and ephemera to ceremoniously burn in theatrical bonfires. “It is massively cathartic and exhilarating and leaves me in tears,” she says. Now, a new use for her vault of wearable sculptures has presented itself: display them in a formal setting. “Why shouldn't I have a gallery show at this age?” she asks. “I’m ecstatic.” And while the works have been painstakingly installed, she hints that a performance will likely expand the show into the city at the end of the month. How could it not? 

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Pat Oleszko: “Pat’s Imperfect Present Tense” is on view from June 8 through July 20, 2024 at David Peter Francis at 35 East Broadway #3F New York, NY 10002.