Mitte, Berlin
Mihai Olos
The Knot
Plan BGaleria Plan B is pleased to present Mihai Olos’ second solo exhibition, offering an overview of his complex oeuvre through a selection of drawings, paintings, sculptures, and photographs. For some of his exhibition openings, Mihai Olos invited guests to connect their fingers in a structure suggesting a knot, thus forming a human chain through the gallery space. He also performed this gesture spontaneously with friends, and notably with Joseph Beuys at documenta 6 in 1977, when Olos drew the symbol on a blackboard—later integrated by Beuys into Das Kapital Raum. The knot appears throughout Olos’s work in countless variations: from the geometrical precision of the 1970s paintings to the looser modules of his late large-scale canvases. It emerges in sketches, dreamlike watercolours, erotic paintings of intertwined bodies, as well as in sculpture, ceramics, small objects, land art, digital studies, and performative projects. Rooted in archaic spindles and the glue-free wooden joints of buildings from his native Maramureș, the knot bridges art and science in a personal way. It resonates with ideas of modular knowledge proposed by quantum physicist Philip Morrison, while also referencing Japanese architecture and Buckminster Fuller’s geodesic domes. For Olos, the module’s social potential lay at the heart of Olospolis or The Universal City—a utopian vision of communities “knotted” together in mutual support. Mihai Olos (b. 1940, Arinis, Romania – 2015, Amoltern, Germany) lived and worked in Romania and Germany. Selected exhibitions include: 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); The Picasso Effect, Museum of Recent Art (MARe), Bucharest (2023); Lost in the Moment That Follows, Ways of Collecting: Ovidiu Șandor Collection, Kunsthalle Praha, 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, Galeria 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); Seeing Histort - 1947-2007. The MNAC Collection, National Museum of Contemporary Art, Bucharest (2019); Perspectives, BOZAR Centre for Contemporary Art, Brussels (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).