If words over time serve as the pages to Ukraine’s evolving story, then Ola Rondiak is its scribe, fashioning collages and multilayered sculptures into objects of meaning. Designed to imprint a sense of power that influences feelings, memory, or perceptions, Rondiak arrays her work with the script of minimalism and rich historical reference. Rondiak’s family lived through the historical events of WWII and Stalin’s Iron Curtain. The Orange Revolution in 2004 and the Revolution of Dignity in 2014 shaped her sense of the physical world. Family history, trauma, and the fertile legacy of Ukrainian crafts inform Rondiak’s aesthetic and process. What makes Rondiak’s work so magnetic? She takes on challenging subject material. Her work interweaves Ukrainian traditional motifs, experimental techniques, with a unique vision for how she perceives the world. Her work identifies as an antidote to technology and the pejorative narrative streaming from it in contemporary culture. It is an invitation to Mind Over Matter, central to the visual, social, and economic culture of contemporary society.

In her newest exhibition opening at metroquadro miami, Rondiak displays over 30 works in plaster of Paris and mixed media collage. Upon entering the gallery, the viewer will see not just work on walls and pedestals, but also clusters of sculptures hung from above. Andy Warhol once told an interviewer he wanted to be a machine, even going so far as to name his studio the Factory. Like any well-oiled machine in a factory, the intention for Rondiak’s installation is to bolt together all the formal elements and principles of design to move the viewer’s eye effortlessly throughout the gallery space, anchored by clarity of the narrative. Hanging in the balance of the gallery space overhead, ripe with symbolism, the work clearly exhibits Mind Over Matter. 

To be sure, matter matters. Inspired by the ancient Ukrainian rag doll, Rondiak’s motanka sculptures represent beloved ancestors and the strength and gifts they bequeathed to generations. When the war broke out in Ukraine, Rondiak began creating the sculptures out of plaster of Paris. When mixed with water the plaster thickens and, with time, hardens. The symbolic material substance designed to hold broken bones together now represents healing and serves to unify the exhibition. After all, who isn’t persuaded to pick up a pen and inscribe their name or write a meme of blessing on a plaster cast? The motankas become the substrate for nurture, hope, and health. As such, the work invites viewers to click the pause button and reflect on the strength and determination of the human psyche to overcome hardship, to relinquish the trans-generational pain, and begin life anew. As Rondiak’s grandfather once told her “no one can take control over our minds.”

Punctuating the plaster of Paris sculptures pose several “art to wear” items. In doing so, Rondiak’s work reawakens the material shift in artistic practices in the 1960s. The decade spawned the first generation, in America that is, to produce "art to wear" connected with fiber arts. The artists broke boundaries. Replete with rivers of turmoil and cultural crises (like much of Ukrainian history), art and fashion brooked the way forward in the 60s. Using the body as her armature for her plastered articles of clothing, whether in presence or in absence, Rondiak too breaks the mold with her bold imagery, concepts, and mastery of craft. Buttressed together in Mind Over Matter, Rondiak’s work lends a visceral point of entry for viewers to engage in their own memory and materiality, and, in some way, while redeeming her own memories.

Ola Rondiak earned her BS degree at Hunter College and later her M.Ed. Her work has been featured in solo and group exhibitions internationally including most recently, WhiteBox-Harlem, NY; The Museum of Kyiv History and RA Gallery, Kyiv, Ukraine; The Shevchenko National Museum and The National Museum of Decorative Art in Kaniv, Ukraine; Context Miami (2019, 2018); the Honchar Museum in Kyiv; US Embassy, Kyiv; Tri--Mission Art Gallery in the American Embassy in Rome, Italy; Dzyga Gallery in Lviv, Ukraine; The Ukrainian Institute of America, NY; The Delaware Contemporary Museum, Wilmington, DE; Zorya Fine Art Gallery, Greenwich, CT; The Ukrainian National Museum, Cleveland and Chicago; The Museum of Kyiv History, Kyiv, Ukraine; The Ukrainian Cultural Center, Paris, France; Benjamin’s Art Gallery, NY;  The W Hotel, Miami, FL; The Ukrainian Art Gallery, Los Angeles, CA; and VeSpace Gallery, Kyiv. Rondiak’s work is part of a permanent collection of The Revolution of Dignity Museum in Kyiv, Ukraine; The Ukrainian Embassy, Bern Switzerland, as well as other private collectors.