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| Erwin Olaf
- Born in 1959 |
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Erwin Olaf has a passionate love affair with life, and enjoys to the full everything it has to offer. His oeuvre is a manifestation of his passion and of his genuine engagement with his subjects.
Olaf has been professionally active for twenty-five years and in this period he has succeeded in evolving from a participating photographer to a director who creates his own reality.. Olaf’s pictures are filled with humor, imagination and exuberance, but they go much further than simple visual intrigue. His works deal with freedom, beauty, loneliness, and being different. Hi convinces his public in a shameless and versatile manner, questioning established norms.
Militancy is an essential feature of his oeuvre. Olaf consistently expresses his own standpoints, fulminating against narrow-mindness, smugness, and rigid norms, but not without humor, bravura and bite. An authentic Olaf is a blow to the head, ruthlessly direct, but simultaneously wrong footing the viewer and poking fun.
One reviewer remarked that in Erwin Olaf’s photographs everyone stares unwaveringly into the lens –thus looking straight into the photographer’s big blue eye, as it were. Olaf approaches the world openly and enthusiastically and this is also the way in which, in his work, he dares to enter the public debate.
Olaf is a master in generating his own world, whether this be in autonomous photographic series, grandiose parties, or film projects. He is also hypercritical, nothing escapes him, so that pictures are created with a placement composed so meticulously that it is almost painful to examine. With these, Olaf manages to produce fictitious yet convincing images of bygone days, fairytales and dreams, populated by historical figures, elves, dwarves, lunatics, and god knows who.
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| Award / Grants |
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2003 "Grote Paul" Award, for the most famous Dutch photographer, Holland
2003 Gold, Photography District New York, USA
2003 Merit, The Association of Photographers, London
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| Public and Private Collections |
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| Selected solo and group exhibitions |
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| 2005 |
Australia Centre for Photography, Sydney, Australia
ARCO Madrid, Spain
Museum of Modern Art, Moscow, Russia
Morocco, Nieuwe Kerk, Amsterdam, The Netherlands
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| 2004 |
Imitation of Live, Modern Art Gallery of Bologna, Italy
National Gallery for Foreign Art, Sofia, Bulgaria
Limburgs Museum, Venlo, The Netherlands
Galerie J. Rabouan Moussion, Paris, France
Rain, Paris Photo with Flatland Gallery, Utrecht, The Netherlands
Art Statements Gallery, Hong Kong, PRC
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| 2003 |
2003 Silver, Groninger Museum, Groningen, The Netherlands
Art Rotterdam Fair, with Flatland Gallery, Utrecht, The Netherlands
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| 2002 |
Paris Photo with Flatland Gallery, Utrecht, The Netherlands
Cultureel Centrum, Knokke-Heist, Belgium
Flatland Gallery, Utrecht, The Netherlands
Espacio Minimo, Madrid, Spain
Buro Beeldende Kunst, Vlissingen
3rd International Photography Festival, Clermont-Ferrand, France
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| 2001 |
2001 B&D, Milan, Italy
Art Chicago, USA
Crown Gallery, Brussels, Belgium
Galway Art Center, Dublin, Irland
Laurence Miller Gallery, New York, USA
Reflex Gallery, Amsterdam, The Netherlands
Espacio Minimo, Madrid, Spain
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