Oh de Laval is the alias of Olga Pothipirom (b. 1990), a successful artist (though she identifies herself as rather a painter) of Thai-Polish origin. Her works, first exhibited in 2020, attracted the attention of Christie's auction house and Playboy magazine. Combining the style of kids' literature illustrations with adult content and sharp titles, Oh de Laval creates a curious universe of Sadean characters hidden in every grown person.
Fig. 1. Oh de Laval with her painting Unhappy People are Dangerous, acryl on canvas (Instagram.com)
Fig. 2. The depth of your love today is the depth of your wound tomorrow, 2023, fragment (slash-paris.com)
Fig. 3. "Be the Flame, not the Moth”, Casanova, 2020 (artsy.net)
Fig. 4. The intimacy of knowing how to prepare someone’s perfect cup of tea (Instagram.com) “Regarding the male figure in this work, we can’t see his face or his full body but we can see his tongue and his penis –– two of the most useful appendages for women during sex. In this painting, it was important for me to switch the roles and present a woman as the initiator and dominant figure who is using the man for his two organs and a tea” (dazeddigital.com).
Fig. 5. Give me a summer to remember (Instagram.com)
Fig. 6. Forbidden fruit tastes the sweetest (Instagram.com)
Fig. 7. Goodbye Innocence (Instagram.com)
Fig. 8. Un Dimanche soir à Paris / A Sunday evening in Paris, 2020 (unitlondon.com)
Fig. 9. Love? Worry not. It will hit you like a comet, 2020 (unitlondon.com)
Fig. 10. When I get down on my knees it’s not to pray (Instagram.com)
Fig. 11. Aries, the dog, glass sculpture in collaboration with Miranda Keyes (Instagram.com)
Art for Me
Oh de Laval was born and raised in Warsaw in a family of a Thai father and a Polish mother. From studying industrial design at the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw, she shifted to sociology. Painter's profiles accentuate her special interest in the works of Émile Durkheim, the founder of modern sociology. From Poland, she moved to France. The Slash article mentions that her pseudonym emerged when she was a street artist (Laval ("Valley") is a town in Western France). Since 2020, Oh de Laval has participated in group exhibitions worldwide and held several solo shows in the UK and France. Her works are collected by galleries in Thailand, Germany, the US, the UK, and China. Besides paintings, she also creates glass sculptures (fig. 11). Perhaps the secret of her success lies in the fact that her canvases are produced primarily for herself: "I'm the only one who knows which one of my paintings is art and which one isn't […] It's art for me"(unitlondon.com). On the other hand, if your creations get popular, it's the gallerists who define what art is.
Fig. 12. Instagram.com
Continue reading in Premium and learn more about how Oh de Laval merges with the characters in her work, her aesthetics and subject matter, the various interpretations of her paintings, and many additional examples of her erotic work.
Click HERE for the surreal gardens of nymphomania in oil paintings by Masaya Yoshioka
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Sources: instagram.com/oh_de_laval/; unitlondon.com; slash-paris.com; Artist Spotlight: Oh de Laval (playboy.com); marguo.com
