Through her practice, Lin Olschowka removes images from their original context and flattens historical hierarchies between high and low culture, questioning the stability of meaning as it applies to imagery. Her motifs are drawn from a vast and varied personal archive of pictures foraged from across visual culture, ranging from meme references to personal photos and art historical sources. She investigates how images change when they are painted, or repainted, boldly and consciously playing along the boundary between copy and creation.

The reutilisation of images extends beyond that which Olschowka sources. She repeats and reworks motifs from her own paintings, whole and in part, creating counterparts that shift to greater or lesser degrees. Isolated motifs become artworks in their own right and whole canvases become small details nestled in broader compositions, thereby creating self-referential links between paintings.

An interest in the formal aspects of the medium of painting is also apparent: rules are bent and at times broken. Different painterly approaches are used at different times, or combined on the same support. She manipulates and warps perspective, with two- and three-dimensional elements placed side by side or layered on top of one another. Scale, too, is played with, both within compositions and between viewer and artwork. At times, the viewer is confronted by near- or larger-than-life-size characters who loom over them. At others, it is the viewer who peers down onto minute and intriguing details that form part of Olschowka’s personal “Bildwelt” (pictorial world), which the artist deftly renders in paint.