MIHAI OLOS
1940-2015, RomaniaMihai Olos built an entire world around a single form. The knot — rooted in the archaic joinery of wooden architecture from his native Maramureș and the spindle structures used to twist fibres — became for him a universal module: a shape that could bridge art and science, the physical and the philosophical, the individual and the collective. It appears across every medium and decade of his practice, from the geometric precision of his 1970s paintings to large-scale canvases, sculptures, ceramics, drawings, and land art. In Romanian, one word for knot is rost — meaning simultaneously a physical joint and, in the abstract, a sense of meaning or purpose — while the extended word rostire means utterance. For Olos, the knot was never merely a visual motif but a way of thinking: about modularity, about community, about how things and people hold together. This vision found its most expansive expression in the concept of Olospolis — a utopian project of modular communities in which members are knotted together in a harmonious, mutually sustaining way of living.
Mihai Olos (1940 – 2015), born in Arinis, Maramures, Romania, lived and worked in Romania and Germany. Selected exhibitions include: Play of Forms. The North-West Architecture Annual, Clădirea Minerul, Baia Mare (2026); The Knot, Plan B, Berlin (2026); Între plan și infinit. Vásárhelyi – Olos, Muzeul Județean de Artă ‘Centrul Artistic Baia Mare’, Baia Mare (2025); Hocus Focus, Conector / OFF-space, Cluj Napoca (2025); The Twist: Failing Empires, Triumphant Provinces, National Museum of Contemporary Art, MNAC Bucharest (2024); 15, Take Ninagawa, Tokyo (2023); Lost in the Moment That Follows, Ways of Collecting: Ovidiu Șandor Collection, Kunsthalle Prague (2023); Monumental and ephemeral. Sculpted Memory, ‘U’ Baracks, Timisoara (2022); Building and Dreaming, BY ART MATTERS Museum, Hangzhou (2022); Art and The City 1974-2021, Museum of Recent Art, Bucharest (2021); Infinite Beings. Joseph Beuys, Horia Damian, Ana Lupas, Mihai Olos, Erika Verzutti, Plan B, Berlin (2021); When in Doubt, Go to a Museum. Works from the Ovidiu Sandor Collection, Lah Contemporary, Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, Collection Laurent Fiévet, Thyssen-Bornemisza Art Contemporary Collection (TBA21), City Museum of Ljubljana (2021); Folklore, Centre Pompidou-Metz, Metz (2020); Perspectives, BOZAR Centre for Contemporary Art, Brussels (2019); SEEING HISTORY – 1947-2007. THE MNAC COLLECTION, The National Museum of Contemporary Art - MNAC, Bucharest (2019); Mihai Olos, Centre Pompidou – Atelier Brancusi, Paris (2018); The Ephemerist. A Mihai Olos Retrospective, The National Museum of Contemporary Art, Bucharest (2016); Olospolis, Plan B, Berlin (2016); Appearance and Essence, ArtEncounters 1st edition, Timisoara (2015); National Museum Brukenthal Sibiu, Romania (2010); Museum of Art, Baia Mare, Romania (2009); International Triennial of Small Sculpture, Murska Sobota, Slovenia (2001); City Art Gallery, Baia Mare, Romania (2000); Künstlerhaus Schloß Wiepersdorf, Germany (1993); Golden Tripod, Schaubühne, Berlin (1993); The 39th Venice Biennale, ‘Space Capital 1970-1977’ by Joseph Beuys (1980); Documenta 6, Kassel, in the framework of the Free International University of Joseph Beuys (1977); Mihai Olos, Maramures Museum, Sighet, Romania (1976); Art and the City, New Gallery, Bucharest (1974); Milan Triennial (1968).
Courtesy Galeria Plan B
Works at Galeria Plan B
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