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Elegance
& Perversity
by
Paco Barragán
Erwin Olaf: Elegance & Perversity
brings together selected works from six series made
between 1999 and 2005. This period not only marks a
very creative episode in Erwin Olaf's artistic
career, but also signals an important shift from
his decadent and carnivalesque photographs of the
1990s and early 2000s, to an introspective
exploration of intimacy and isolation within the
family unit.
Exuberant, controversial and baroque, series like
Mature, Royal Blood, Fashion
Victims, and Paradise the Club, as well
as the recent quieter Separation and
Rain have become portraits of our times. Erwin
Olaf captures the aggressive spirit of
postmodernity with all its contradictions:
over-consumption, hypocrisy, fetishism, violence,
social control and marginalisation. He hints at the
part we all play in these contradictions, inviting
us to think not to judge, to look not to
demonize.
Within the diversity of Olaf's subject matter -
fashion, cinema, society, history, advertising - he
always achieves a very individual style. This is
characterised by, on the one hand, making the
personal public, creating unease as the protection
of anonymity is drawn aside; and, on the other
hand, extending the role of simple voyeur to that
of transgressor. We feel his characters to be too
intrusive, too close to us, and we imagine taking
on their roles to become, for a moment, a porn
star, a cruel clown or a martyred celebrity.
This exhibition is a convergence of carefully
staged moments in which iconic historical
characters (Royal Blood) aging pin-ups
(Mature) fashionably fetishised bodies
(Fashion Victims) depraved clowns and
hysterical voyeurs (Paradise the Club) are
juxtaposed with an alienated mother and child
(Separation) and a claustrophobic family
dinner (Rain). In all these scenarios,
representing as they do the diversity of the human
condition, the body becomes a site of transgression
that throws into question the current codes of
morality, freedom and beauty.
The artist plays in a subtle way with close ups,
background and colour. Here and there he stretches
gestures, faces, hands and poses by means of
digitally manipulation, bestowing on the whole an
additional charge of dramatic tension. Thus, the
initial colourful, elegant and festive ambiance
gives way to a more anxious, perverse and
constrained atmosphere. We might, of course, ask if
the world in which we live is really so violent,
banal and disconsolate. For Erwin it is simply
about "something that is out there and that forms
part of our society". It is as if the artist wants
to remind us that there is no compassion, even in
Paradise!
Paco Barragán
Image Credits:
• © Erwin Olaf Di
2000
• © Erwin Olaf Claudia S. - 63
1999
• © Erwin Olaf from the series
Rain 2004
Erwin Olaf: Elegance & Perversity is an
Australian Centre for Photography Touring
Exhibition
Curator: Paco Barragán
Room notes © Australian Centre for
Photography
Images © Erwin Olaf BV
Text © Paco Barragán and Alasdair
Foster
Published July 2005 by Australian Centre for
Photography
This
exhibition has been made possible through the
generous support of
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