Patricia Olynyk new art review

Gallery artist, Patricia Olynyk video “Black Swan in Three Variations” part of the exhibition “House of Learning” at the Allegories of Information-Vienna Art Week was reviewed by Will Corwin in the Right Click Save. (Photography by Will Corwin) Read more at Allegories of Information | Vienna Art Week

“Starting from a point of almost complete futility, the 37 artists in the exhibition present both digital and analog considerations of the mechanisms of learning, as well as the systems which we are required to learn and unlearn.

Critical to learning is the quality of the data we process, and Patricia Olynyk and Adam Hogan’s digital video and soundtrack Black Swan in Three Variations (2025) is a metaphorical depiction of Nassim Nicolas Taleb’s Black Swan Theory (expressed in his book Antifragile), an historical interpretation which explores seemingly unexpected events for which, in hindsight, there was ample forewarning. Olynyk and Hogan utilize the swan as a bellwether signifier, as it undergoes various afflictions representative of climate change and fossil fuel dependence, among other things.

The action transpires in slow motion, a poetic illustration of inaction in the face of disturbing presentiment. The video is screened in the former recording studios of the ORF, so the work can be viewed directly, or through a portal from the sound engineer’s lair, where a second work by Olynyk and Hogan, (Untitled) Vienna Broadcast (2025), a medley of distorted historical radio broadcasts referencing Austria’s own Black Swan events, plays as a second soundtrack to the visual work.”

We started to think of what produces ungovernable forces that can be seen only by way of their effects. This is why we started getting feathers and fluids and images of swans and other sculptures to drop into water, then see what happens once they’re in these situations that are intrinsically ungovernable. We were trying to set the conditions in a Studio/Lab situation that would not illustrate Taleb, but would serve as an alibi to the theory. (Patricia Olynyk, Artist)