2023-09-21 07:47:01
Currently, the Photography Room of the Niemeyer Center hosts the self-produced exhibition “Erwin Olaf. “A world that disappears.” In the interview that curator Paco Barragán conducted with him on the occasion of the exhibition, the Dutch artist pointed out: “Perhaps it is the deep conviction that when the moment of truth arrives, when one stands before God and tells you that you have If you look directly into your face, you will realize that you are completely alone. And that attempted feeling of being alone, without frills, with nothing to hold on to, scares me as much as it intrigues. It is the ultimate emotion that I want to explore and conceive in every job I do, so that I can get used to it before the time comes.”
Avilés, September 20, 2023. The Niemeyer Center would like to express its deepest condolences regarding the unexpected death today of photographer Erwin Olaf. The news was reported by his team of collaborators and was immediately echoed by the Dutch media. Currently, the Photography Room of the Niemeyer Center in Avilés hosts the exhibition Erwin Olaf. A world that fadescurated by Dr. Paco Barragán.
The artist: Erwin Olaf (Hilversum, 1959 – Amsterdam, 2023), icon of contemporary photography
Born in 1959 in Hilversum, Netherlands.
Erwin Olaf has been an international artist whose interdisciplinary practice has focused on individuals marginalized by society such as women, people of color, and the LGBTIQ+ community. In 2019 Olaf was appointed Knight of the Order of the Lion of the Netherlands for having donated 500 works to the Rijksmuseum collection. Taco Dibbits, director of the Rijksmuseum, stated that Olaf “is one of the most important photographers of the late 20th century.”
In 2018, Olaf completed his triptych of photographic and videographic series that portrayed seismic periods of change in the largest metropolises in the world and the impact they had on urban progress. Like much of his work, these series are framed in a context of complex racial relations, marked economic differences, and issues related to sexuality. Olaf has always maintained an activist approach to equality throughout his 40-year career since he began documenting the gay liberation of Amsterdam night before the AIDS era in the 1980s.
Through a daring and sometimes controversial approach, Olaf has won numerous awards and has been able to collaborate with prestigious institutions, from Vogue and Louis Vuitton to the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam.
Olaf was the photographer chosen to take the official portrait of the Dutch royal family in 2017 and had also designed the effigy of King William-Alexander in 2012 for the national face of the euro. Among the awards obtained are the prestigious Johannes Vermeer Award, Photographer of the Year at the International Color Awards as well as the Dutch Artist of the Year awarded by Kunstbeeld magazine.
Erwin Olaf has a rich resume of international exhibitions including the Rijksmuseum and the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam, Netherlands; the Domus Artium Museum (DA2) in Salamanca and the Contemporary Art Center (CAC) in Malaga, Spain; the Museu da Imagem e do Som, São Paulo, Brazil; the Martin-Gropius-Bau, Berlin, Germany; the Southeastern Center for Contemporary Art, Winston-Salem, North Carolina, USA; the Museum of Contemporary Art (MAC), Santiago de Chile; the Australian Center for Photography (ACP) in Sydney and the Institute of Modern Art (IMA) in Brisbane, both in Australia; the Museum of Contemporary Canadian Art (MoCCA) in Toronto, Canada. In spring 2019, Olaf was the subject of a double exhibition at the Kunstmuseum in The Hague and the Museum of Photography in The Hague and monographic exhibitions at the Shanghai Center of Photography and the Rijkmuseum in Amsterdam. In 2021 Olaf was the subject of major exhibitions at the Kunsthalle Munich and the Suwon Museum of Art, Suwon, Korea.
His work is part of numerous private and public collections, including the Rijksmuseum and the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam, Netherlands; the MUSAC of León and the TEA of Tenerife, Spain; the Fonds National d’Art Contemporain, Paris, France; the Ludwig Museum in Cologne, Germany; Museum Voorlinden, Wassenaar, Netherlands; the North Carolina Museum of Art, Raleigh, United States; the Art Progressive Collection, United States; and the Pushkin Museum in Moscow, Russian Federation.
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