The Langhans Gallery Prague

A Dutch photographer, Erwin Olaf (b. 1959), will be showing a selection of his photographs from five recent series at Langhans Gallery Prague, and one set from the beginning of the 1990s.

The exhibition ‘A Choreography of Emotions’ at Langhans Gallery Prague presents a selection of photographic series by the acclaimed Dutch photographer Erwin Olaf, from 2004 to 2008. In addition, it includes Blacks, a series of black-and-white photographs from 1990. The exhibition is being held as part of the NethWorks.cz festival of contemporary Netherlands culture. Its curator is Jiří Ptáček.

The year 2004 was a watershed for Olaf. Whereas he previously had drawn his inspiration from the opulence and gilt of the Late Baroque and the open-endedness of Postmodern popular culture, in the series Rain (2004), Hope (2005), and Grief (2007) he turned his attention to hidden, suppressed emotions of an existential nature. It is typical of his way of working, however, that he does not observe hope or grief, nor even looks for them, but, instead, endeavours to construct them in a study employing photographic means (working with models, lighting, the overall harmonizing of the Retro scenes in the style of the late 1950s and early 1960s). Olaf has transferred his understanding of the pictorial conventions of photography and film into the arrangement of the scenes, making them seem familiar to us. The superb craftsmanship with which they are executed intensifies the effect. A Postmodern photographer, Olaf creates not only suggestive pictures, but also lets them resonate with references to fashion photography, his favourite film directors David Lynch, Federico Fellini, and Pedro Almodóvar, and also that painter of the solitude of modern life, Edward Hopper, and seventeenth-century Dutch artists, particularly the iconic painter of the Netherlandish Baroque, Jan Vermeer van Delft.

The ambiguously named Fall (2008), Olaf’s most recent series, follows on in some ways from the other three series. Beautiful men and women models are caught at the moment they blink. We tend to consider such photographs undesirable, and erase them from the memory cards of our cameras and from our own memories. For Olaf, however, half-closed eyes are both a mistake/flawed beauty and a symbol of time, in the photographic sense and the sense of everyday life. The moment, ‘the wink of an eye‘, is juxtaposed with the motionless, sculptural, floral still life (nature morte), creating a tension between the fleeting moment and duration, the intentional mistake and the possibility that we will perceive it as an expression of fatigue, exhaustion, or resignation.

The three series Rain, Hope, and Grief challenge us in particular to a narrative interpretation. Olaf also accompanies each series with a short film in which he completes the story and makes a point. The exhibition, however, includes only one photograph from the set Le Dernier Cri (2007). The curator of the exhibition, Jiří Ptáček, explains: ‘Olaf’s work entails several symmetries: the narrative photographs are accompanied by video-stories; the scenes in interiors correspond to the number of individual portraits; in Fall each portrait is accompanied by a flower. In my selection I have taken the opportunity to use asymmetry. I believe this better enables the viewer to use his or her own imagination, and, if he or she wishes, to become the maker of the story.’

Olaf is also a sought-after photographer for fashion and advertising work. It is fair to see some of the series as a way of ventilating a critical view of the world of fashion. The photography and the mini sci-fi film Le Dernier Cri ironize the sacrifice that people willingly bring to the altar of fashion. Similarly, it is fair to see Fall as a memento mori, where beautiful youth reveals its finite nature.

In 1991 Olaf visited Czechoslovakia to work with the designer Bořek Šípek, but he is showing his work in the Czech Republic for the first time.

The Life of Erwin Olaf

Erwin Olaf was born in Hilversum, the Netherlands, in 1959. He initially wanted to become a journalist, and in the second half of the 1970s attended the School of Journalism in Utrecht. It was here that he became enthusiastic about photography and film. Beginning in 1980 he worked as an assistant photographer to André Ruigrok. In the course of the 1980s his own photographs began to be published in periodicals, and he begin to show his work at exhibitions. For his black-and-white series Chessmen (1988) he was given First Prize in the Young European Photographers competition and his photos were exhibited in the Museum Ludwig, Cologne. Since the beginning of the 1990s he has also devoted himself to making music videos.

Olaf’s work with the Czech designer Bořek Šípek dates from 1991. Commissioned by the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, he went to Slovakia to photograph Šípek’s design work in the setting of Gypsy villages.

Olaf exhibits his works regularly in private galleries all over the world. The year it was made, the series Royal Blood (1998) was shown as part of the Paris Photo fair. He has had solo exhibitions organized by institutions like the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam (1991), the Frankfurter Kunstverein (1995), the Museum Ludwig, Cologne (1998), the Museum of Art, Łódź (2003), the Museum of Modern Art, Moscow (2005), and the Hague Museum of Photography, (2008). While the Prague exhibition is still running, an exhibition of Olaf’s works will open in the Institut Neerlandais, Paris.

Olaf’s art photography coexists with his commercial work. He is among the most sought-after photographers in advertising. Among the companies that have asked him to do their campaigns are Heineken, Diesel, Nicorette, and Lavazza. He has received several important prizes for his work, including the 1998 Silver Lion at the Cannes Lions International Advertising Festival for his work on a campaign for Diesel clothing.

A number of his photographic series are published in catalogues and books. A monograph of his recent photography series and films was published last year by Aperture, New York.

www.erwinolaf.com

www.nethworks.cz

www.aperture.org

The exhibition is organized by Langhans Gallery Prague in collaboration with the Royal Netherlands Embassy in Prague and the Erwin Olaf Studio in Amsterdam.

We thank the Royal Netherlands Embassy in Prague, the Mondriaan Foundation, the Ministry of Culture of the Czech Republic, and Prague City Hall for their kind support.

Media partners: A2, Art & Antiques, FotoVideo, PragueOut, Rádio 1, Respekt

Impressum:

curator: Jiří Ptáček      

production: Shirley den Hartog & the Erwin Olaf Studio, Kateřina Kloubová, David Korecký

accompanying text: Eddie Marsman

translations: Derek Paton, Petra Key

graphic design: Robert V. Novák

technical assistance: Jakub Čermák, Jan Haubelt, Václav Kubela

gallery director: Zuzana Meisnerová Wismer

You can also visit an exhibition "Marco, a story of the mannequin" by Szymon Hantkiewicz prepared by Format 1 Association for the basement of Langhans Gallery Prague. More at http://www.format1.org/en-index.php.