Erwin Olaf (1959-2023, Netherlands) was never interested in the explicit, he always wanted to go further; visualize that which is only assumed and resists easy documentation, in order to explore the complexities of existence. Hence, to reflect reality, the artist chose to create his own world, reconstructing meticulously organized scenes, of neat and perfectionist beauty, which, although they offer innumerable details, could well evade the most tangible aspects of life. Silent images full of enigma that produce a dramatic and emotional visual impact, through which the author uses to point out different problems and taboos of contemporary society.
!['Masonic Lodge, Dahlem', from the series 'Berlin' (2012). By Erwin Olaf.](https://imagenes.elpais.com/resizer/v2/6MALFT6SZNB4FD3I5WUX4AL3EQ.jpeg?auth=225a7b8611a97ba88554d56cb20f09363bf015b7e4cab57b4dac536e4be54183&width=414)
!['Du Mansion, The Parting', from the series 'Shanghai' (2017). By Erwin Olaf.](https://imagenes.elpais.com/resizer/v2/IOCQKHBZ35GBTKXHCMMKNSIJKQ.jpeg?auth=d43c19ebf8457ad40c6693c5076ffba426f724fa6c2227cfa632351500ee7203&width=414)
!['American Dream, Self-Portrait with Alex 1', from the series 'Palm Springs' (2018). By Erwin Olaf.](https://imagenes.elpais.com/resizer/v2/53HX6JGUGFDIXLXAAJF6DLFSRY.jpeg?auth=daa902f43efde832ac8ada1822534f46d48d0ca40bc1fdf27ce96bd774b67861&width=414)
!['The Kite', from the series 'Palm Springs' (2018). By Erwin Olaf.](https://imagenes.elpais.com/resizer/v2/F3VG3CVBXJCONDI7H722SFDFMI.jpeg?auth=e0f6e62081eceb344c1ba9db4258da0785ac3b3cf0afb225af2b3a4494a9762e&width=414)
!['Auf dem See', from the series 'Im Wald', (2020). By Erwin Olaf.](https://imagenes.elpais.com/resizer/v2/COEV7NAI7BG3XE5JGMQJ35XXWE.jpg?auth=d51ef62e5a4685ba5380b8b15e4366e34f3716c565ec622946bc1a2c6ca7ce08&width=414)
!['9:50 am', from the series 'April Fool 2020' (2020). By Erwin Olaf.](https://imagenes.elpais.com/resizer/v2/W76PELG435CE5MURWQG2DYU74A.jpeg?auth=325d3f1ec6dd2bca7536480b7070f9fcd61ae70b9eed76e051e5a6f4ec0aa290&width=414)
185 photographs, accompanied by 20 videos and video installations, immerse the viewer in the disturbing universe of the Dutch artist in Erwin Olaf. Narratives of emancipation, desire and intimacy. This is one of the most anticipated exhibitions in the Official Section of PHotoEspaña; the largest retrospective dedicated to the artist to date, curated by Paco Barragán, also curator of the exhibition that the Niemeyer Center in Avilés dedicated last year to the photographer, inaugurated two months before Olaf’s premature death, which occurred after having undergone a lung transplant. The new exhibition covers four decades (from the eighties to 2020) of the author’s career, considered one of the great innovators of the photographic medium and narrative video. Articulated around three aspects: the political, the sensual and the emotional, it highlights the activist nature of the photographer, regardless of the work produced for fashion magazines such as Vogue and elle and for companies such as Heineken, BMW, Microsoft, Bottega Veneta, Levi’s and Diesel Jeans, among many others, where Olaf will manage to dilute art and advertising through the same provocation, fantasy, his biting sarcasm and the refined atmosphere of which He turned to his personal work.
The exhibition begins its journey with a series of self-portraits where the I Wish, I Am, I Will Be (2009). Taken on the occasion of his fiftieth birthday, the photographer alluded not only to the hedonistic cult of youth and beauty, as a sign of the times, expressed through photographic retouching, but also seemed to meditate on his own mortality. The self-portrait would never cease to be another statement of his activism.
!['Du Mansion, The Parting', from the series 'Shanghai' (2017). By Erwin Olaf.](https://imagenes.elpais.com/resizer/v2/IOCQKHBZ35GBTKXHCMMKNSIJKQ.jpeg?auth=d43c19ebf8457ad40c6693c5076ffba426f724fa6c2227cfa632351500ee7203&width=414)
Olaf said that, as a journalism student, the first photograph that impressed him was The gay deceiver (1940), by Weegee, in which a drag queen gets out of the police car. Looking at that image he was able to confirm two things: his desire to be part of that world, and to feel proud of belonging to a minority, and that the camera, unlike writing, offered the possibility of capturing a decisive moment. An unrepeatable moment, which would not necessarily have to occur on the street, but could be provoked within his own studio, as this would confirm. Squares, Joy (1985), where a young gay man poses naked while the spray of a recently uncorked champagne bottle splashes on his chest. The eighties were passing, a time of darkness for the homosexual community, and yet, Olaf’s image spoke of the happiness of being able to be oneself. The photograph belongs to the series Squares (1983-1993) that overlaps with chessmen (1988), whose images, also square and in black and white, inspired by medieval chess pieces, allude to both submission and power, and reflect the influence of Robert Mapplethorpe and Joel Peter Witkin on the author.
“In complete darkness we all seem the same, it is only our knowledge and wisdom that separates us. “Don’t let your eyes betray you,” sang the African-American artist Janet Jackson, a song that inspired the photographer’s next series. Blacks/Negros (1990), whose immobile protagonists demonstrate not only a demand for equality, but also the technical skill of the photographer, who will achieve a range of rich tones in an atmosphere as baroque as it is dark.
!['Auf dem See', from the series 'Im Wald', (2020). By Erwin Olaf.](https://imagenes.elpais.com/resizer/v2/COEV7NAI7BG3XE5JGMQJ35XXWE.jpg?auth=d51ef62e5a4685ba5380b8b15e4366e34f3716c565ec622946bc1a2c6ca7ce08&width=414)
It will be in the series Rain, Hope and Grief where Olaf’s work takes on a more Hopperian tone and the emotions of its protagonists begin to gain more intensity. An emotion that is not only manifested in the look, but in the distance that separates two people, as occurs in Dancing Period. Scenes that tell stories fueled by small elements, like the telephone found inside the kitchen where a woman sits in front of a cup, surrounded by a dense atmosphere, where anything can be possible. They are images as cinematic as they are pictorial. Impeccable scenes that transcend the non-photogenic realities of the world, where we will find all the technical elements that will characterize Olaf’s work; perfect lighting, and a theatrical composition that adds a feeling of unease to the viewer, who will be forced to ask themselves “what’s going on here?”; to wonder about both the past and the future. The loneliness that the characters give off, the yellowish grass, or a small gesture seem to speak to us about the complexity of existence in contrast to that perfect facade, which is why the artist described his creations as “a perfect world with a crack.” As critic Donald Kuspit described: “Without his formal subtlety, Olaf’s photographs would be clinical and cold, and his subjects as alive as the wax figures at Madame Tussauds.”
The lighting color changes on the walls accompany the visitor on a non-chronological tour guided, also, by the author’s own quotes. “I love investigating where the stillness or immobility of photography ends and where the movement of cinema begins,” says one of them. “I’m also interested that in the West today parents have given children enormous power. I wonder what the world will be like if children ruled adults,” highlights the person in charge of presenting Berlin (2012), one of his best-known series, where he will not fail to point out the similarities between our era and the interwar era in terms of the resurgence of different types of fanaticism.
The color red frames the block dedicated to the sensual body, where the artist alludes to the excessive cult of the body that characterizes our time while ensuring that he returns to the nude as a tribute to the history of European art. “If you portray the body through painting, it is art, but if, on the contrary, you do it through photography, people see it as pornography,” warns the photographer.
in the series Im Wald (In the forest) The majesty and greatness of nature, as well as the arrogance of man in the face of it, is summarized in a self-portrait that pays tribute to The walker on the clouds, by Caspar David Friedrich. “Here I am no longer contemplating the future, but realizing its finitude,” the Dutch photographer clarified. The series reflects the photographer’s ability to look at the art of the past in search of issues that deal with the present, which is reflected, not without a certain humor, through the tattoos and headphones of its protagonists, who seek a better future in a nebulous forest where plastics have also arrived.
Alienation and lack of communication shape the last block, where the leather suits worn by the members of a family allude to the complex approaches that are established within this family.. April Fools 2020 (2020) would serve as the end point of the sample. Made during the pandemic, the artist portrays himself in the series as a sad masked clown whose fragility is accentuated by the empty shopping cart. For decades it seemed as if we had taken for granted that the world would always be the same.
Erwin Olaf. Narratives of emancipation, desire and intimacy. Fernán Gómez Cultural Center of the Villa. Madrid. Until July 14th.
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