Erwin Olaf

«What I really want to show is a perfect world with a crack in it. My work is to make the picture attractive enough for people to want to look at the story I’m telling them, and then give them a slap.» With this quote, Erwin Olaf summarizes forty years of a career in photography and video on the issue of disorder

For his first collaboration with the Mexican gallery, Erwin Olaf chose with Patricia Conde a selection of works highlighting his passion for the history of art and especially for the golden age period of Dutch painting. The reference to classical painting by the great Dutch masters such as Vermeer and Pieter Claesz have embodied his photographic compositions since his beginnings. It is important to recall how the artist makes his shots in the manner of his masters, fascinated by the light of Rembrandt’s works and the precision of Claesz's vanitas. Just like them, Erwin Olaf uses a dark background on which he puts a silky fabric to compose still lifes, vanitas, or portraits. He does not hesitate to break the codes of classical portraits that he observed a lot during his visits to the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam.

Text by Béatrice Andrieux

Opening on Abril 28, 12-5PM