AC Olson "At Least Smoking is Cool Again"
Smoke & Mirrors
- Sat, Sep 5, 2026 - Sun, Sep 27, 2026 9am - 5pm On View
- Saturday, Sep 12, 2026 5pm - 7pm Art Reception
Bay 300 Gallery at The Silos at Sawyer Yards1502 Sawyer
Smoke & Mirrors: Disco’s Elusive Promise presents AC Olson’s sculptural paintings as portals into the ecstatic, illusory freedom of disco clubs past and present. Featuring ash trays and disco balls rendered as luminous forms, the works use saturated color and shifting geometries to shimmer between solidity and apparition, evoking the charged atmosphere of Studio 54-era spaces where liberation felt imminent.
Across this body of work, Olson is questing to experience that same promised liberation which seems to only quietly flicker in today's disco clubs. The exhibition invites viewers into a world of light and illusion, to a place where joy becomes resistance, where indulgence is necessity, and where the dance floor continues to offer the radical possibility of genuine freedom.
AC Olson is a Houston‑based artist whose work explores the intersection of joy, human connection, and the pursuit of liberation through surreal, abstract, and fauvist influences. Their sculptural paintings, a body of work Olson refers to as glass abstractions, draw from an enduring fascination with glass reflections, resulting in bold colors and light‑drenched compositions. Olson’s full‑time work as a strategy consultant informs a studio practice attuned to how the demands of contemporary life quietly misshape the pursuit of collective freedom. Rooted in a personal mantra to “seek pleasure in everything,” their work positions art‑making as an act of rebellion and connection.