Meet Ole

Ole Ukena is a German multidisciplinary artist that lives and works in Berlin, Bali and Brazil. Ukena interweaves a variety of media including sculpture, installation, water color, drawing, text, photography & video and has in recent years focused on working with textiles. Ukena is known to merge traditional embroidery processes in combination with high tech reflective and uncommon materials. Ukena refers to his textile work simply as “paintings” . His recent work is typically situated in a place between abstraction and figuration and his intuitive lines create dreamlike associations that open the narrative for the viewer to complete.

Since 2020 his body of work has extended to architecture, murals, as well as wearable pieces, taking the work out from the gallery and studio context into the streets. His work has been shown in galleries and museums around the world including Centre Pompidou, Paris (2011), Paris Photo, Grand Palais (2013), Giving Up Is Not An Option, Serindia Gallery Bangkok (2011), Highjacking Karma, Stigter Van Doesburg, Amsterdam (2015), Galeria Lume, Sao Paulo (2018), Three And One Chairs, KMAC Museum, Louisville (2019).