(PPE) Punster Provocateur Extraordinaire

"Big Feet" (1995)

Inflatables remind me of suburban car dealerships and tacky holiday decorations in Lake Worth Beach.  But artist Pat Oleszko has been employing them in service of her irreverent performance art since 1980.  

Here's what she has to say about "Blowhilda," her first, in the essential catalog for a button-pushing exhibit at the Sculpture Center in Long Island City.

The first performances with inflatables characterized newspaper stories blown out of proportion. "Blowhilda" represents the Munich Opera in protest. The opera staged a ‘mouth-out’ strike during the final act of Die Meistersinger Nürnberg, where singers moved their lips but emanated no sounds. They got their raise.

Much of Oleszko's work, which includes sculptures that don't need to be blown up, remains absolutely contemporary.  Look no further than the basement for evidence.  Believe it or not, she created the "O-men" in 1974.  

"Fool Disclosure" opened at the Sculpture Center a month before this loathed figure began bombing the shit out of Iran.

"DUMP DA TRUMPTY ON HIS GREAT THRONE" (2025)

Nor did she spare George W. Bush, another president who invaded the Middle East for no good reason.

"WarUSaurUs" & "Miss Ill Cluster"  (2007)

Closer to home,  Oleszko called gentrification from the get-go.  

"Yupasaurus II" (1987)

The Yup starred in a film and performance chronicle of The Free Little Pig, as an artist who was constantly forced to relocate because of ever-avid real estate monsters. Finally, after building her dream house, acclaim comes to the Free world and, she doesn’t sell out.

And I love how she turned the "domino theory"--an American anti-communism strategy responsible for the war in Viet Nam--on its head shortly after the fall of the Berlin Wall.

A tribute to those joyous moments when the Berlin Wall came tumbling down. Poland stands first amidst the Eastern Bloc that collapsed communism in rubble without pause.

It's probably no coincidence that Oleszko's father, a chemical engineer, immigrated to Detroit from Poland.

Oleszko once boiled her artistic method to “using all the world as a stooge," in part because of the portability of the inflatables which allowed her to perform almost anywhere.  I'm truly sorry I never caught her act.

No doubt, her heavy emphasis on sexual politics limited her appeal and recognition mostly to the "underground" (aka the usual ghetto for female artists), although she did appear as Lady Liberty on the cover of Ms. magazine in 1976.

Oleszko moved to New York shortly after earning her bachelor of fine arts degree from the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor.  Some of her early sculptural work lovingly skewers the first-wave feminist movement of her generation.  Female stereotypes of the era face off in a basement corridor.   How underground can you get?

Women's Libber (1971)

"Baby Hippy"  & "DAR (Daughter of the American Revolution") (1971)

"Little Old Lady" (1971)

Gloria Steinem, of course, was once employed as a Playboy bunny.  

Playboy Bunny (1971)

Oleszko went even farther out on a limb than Steinem.  Here's what she has to say about "Big Pussy" from 1989:  An homage to my mentor, burlesque queen Rose La Rose (who named me “Pat the Hippy Strippy”) during my side gig stripping while in college, an early and lifelong exploration and benign exploitation of female forums and forms.

Although her work can shock

"Womb with a View" (1990) & "Mr. Green Jeans" (2000)

. . . its essential truth, usually delivered with a humorous punch, cannot be denied. 

"Duh Nincompope" (1999)

Never mind that I was in residence at the esteemed American Academy in Rome and eventually landed in the slammer for posing as Duh Nincompope at the Vatican, a tiny rendition of pomposity toting a Supersoaker filled with holy water.

The tape measure at the bottom kills me!

Oleszko seems resolutely binary in her attitude about gender.  At least women in her caricatures get real heads.

Men, for the most part, are buffoons.

The fat buoys were the foil for Oldilocks, an interloper who, after the original conflicts about food and lodging were resolved, was finally accepted by that Arm-y of Three when she began serving booze-laced porridge and life improved

all ‘round.

"Three Bozos" (1985)

I read the ads. I got the books. I could be the man I’d always wanted to be. Pumping irony was my game. Sew and ye shall reap.

Nobody but a baby boomer will recognize who Oleszko is spoofing here.

"Charles Patless" and "Barbells for Charles Patless" by Pat Oleszko (1980)

Fashion catches her gimlet eye, too.  Apparently she enjoyed her nights out at Studio 54 and the Mudd Club.

"Knee-o-Fashism: Wendy Wear-With-All and Her Sole Sister, Ms. Trixie" (1994)

Oleszko, nearing 80, is still going strong.  "Nora's Ark," sculpted just last year, incorporates animal crackers, likely an ironic allusion to the traditional women's work of feeding children instead of merely herding animals onto a boat as her husband reputedly did to get star billing in the oh-so-patriarchal Bible.