Wafers, 2015

…While she takes her general approach from science, or at least its methodological cousin in art, minimalism…Olson transcends the Spartan rigor of that movement by imbuing its abstract, non-metaphorical framework with philosophical and environmental concerns. The scholar David Nye coined the term, “the technological sublime,” to speak of Americans’ justifiable feelings of awe before engineered achievements …The science fiction writer Arthur C. Clarke declared, “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” ...Olson adopts the processes and procedures of scientific inquiry but makes of it something magical.

— Dewitt Cheng, exhibition curator, in “The Technological Sublime" (exhibition essay) 2015

Concrete, 2016

...the main aesthetic evoked is that of the pale, understated grids of Agnes Martin. Like Martin, Olson proposes bare abstraction, free of discernible references. The difference is that she arrives at it by grinding a photo down into lines and hues. Olson’s stated goal is to explore how the computer “sees,” and to understand how her digital tools and processes alter an image. In this regard, she stands at the forefront of a group of digital and Internet-focused artists (Doug Rickard, Trevor Paglen, Penelope Umbrico and Douglas Coupland) who are attempting to discern what it means to represent the world in 1s and 0s.

… it's easy savor the sly humor of a body of work that portrays a gallery within a gallery. Machines make it possible, but the subtlety of it is something only humans can grasp.

David M. Roth, Squarecylinder.com, May 3, 2016

“T”, 2024

Wooly Web, 2022