Erwin Olaf

Erwin Olaf
Grief
By Jonathan Turner

In his portrait photographs Amsterdam-based artist Erwin Olaf plays games with the idea of cold reality versus cruel artifice. His recent imagery is based on American aristocracy in the early 1960s. It blends journalistic details with staged emotions. In Grief, Olaf's latest series currently on show, solitary figures brood in tearful silence, capturing that precise moment when innocence, hope and joy were all lost. Nothing is as it seems and in Erwin's recreated world, nothing is real.

"Grief is a series about the choreography of emotion, and what you can create in the studio," says Erwin Olaf. "The more realistic that much art photography is becoming, the more I try to create an artificial version. Realism in photography can be just as artificial as realism in the world outside. So I wanted to ask the question: how does grief really look? What is the aesthetic of grieving? In my portrait of Grace, even though you don't see her face, the way she is standing with her head tilted, how she looks out the window, the way the handkerchief is crumpled in her hand, tells a story. It's the same as when you watch a movie. You might start to cry, even though what you see is fake."

With brittle hair and kittenish faces, their eyelids and noses red, Olaf's models cry the same glycerine tears as those in the mass-produced pictures of crying gypsy children. His models are achingly beautiful. Shut off from the world outside, with gauze curtains screening them from the gardens beyond, they seek privacy. In a world ruled by etiquette and protocol, the light is virtually evangelical.

"My inspiration is a photo book about the Kennedy dynasty, with Jackie and other upper class ladies leaning on a couch in the White House, showing in a new era in the US and the world. You see that the women in the pictures are behaving more liberated. Drinking, smoking, hair getting looser, looking glamorous."

Frozen in alternating close-ups and wider interior shots, Olaf's models are given names common in post-War American high society - Victoria, Sarah, Margaret, Caroline, Irene, Barbara, and the ice-princess herself, Grace. They take comfort in a glass of scotch. No ice. The women are already chilled enough. Even their whisky is neat. The grieving "widows" are discreet in their solitude. They sit in proper, lady-like poses, their knees pushed together. The textured wall surfaces seem much rougher and tougher than the models' characters.

While Victoria, her neck creased, looks back accusingly at the viewer, others turn away altogether, avoiding scrutiny, alone in their misery. Sarah, her eye-lids puffy, appears the most distressed. She sits alone at a table set for two. But this is not the real fable of tragedy. The perpetual myth of Jackie is of a frigid aristocratic beauty, drenched in blood at the violent death of her husband, depicted as an untouchable icon by Warhol at the funeral afterwards, then tarnishing her mystique by marrying an ugly Greek tycoon. Instead, in its melodramatic way, Olaf's new series is closer in mood to the soap-like television movie A Woman Named Jackie, directed by a guy called Larry Peerce. This is a "historical" production outlining ridiculous social intrigue. The first line uttered by the actress who plays Jacqueline de Bouvier, nervously smoking a cigarette in an unspecified hotel room is: "I am a mess"

In any case, Olaf's series is also about the décor. The furnishings, like the women's clothes, are spartan, uncluttered and stylsh, in grey, cream, mocca, pearl, wood-tones and neutral hues, like in anonymous suites in hotels or diplomatic residences. The emotions are washed out. Even the colours are bleached.

The rooms are decorated with vases holding cacti, succulents, a spiky Christmas tree, spiny plants. The atmosphere, despite the precisely dated coiffeurs and brocades, is purposely timeless, typified by such props as watches, clocks and a suitcase open on a bed.

After his previous series Hope and Rain, the 15 portraits that make up Grief (seven women and a single white male) provide a closure to Olaf's recent fascination with the visual representation of such emotions as desolation, loneliness and despair. However, a sense of anticipation and foreboding remain.

"Like in Hope and Rain, I was interested in capturing the moment between action and reaction. I wanted total isolation of the figures, to be able to zoom in on the occasion. I wanted to focus more on the character."
To accentuate the idea of solitude, Olaf's photographs include various symbols of grief and traces of former companionship. Is the glass half full or half empty? Is she dining alone?

"In one photo, you see two branches of a Christmas tree. But does it really mean anything?" asks Olaf with a laugh. "It somehow makes the grief seem bigger. After all, there is nothing quite as sad as Christmas in the desert

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Erwin Olaf brings his incisive wit and vision to create a satirical portrait of our contemporary consumer society. Visually sophisticated and conceptually provocative, his images challenge global trends towards youth-obsessed sexuality, hypocrisy, violence, hyper-consumerism and social control.

Rain by Jonathan Turner

In Rain, Erwin Olaf's most recent photo series, we observe solitary figures from an icey distance. These six photographs have a post-war aura; they are advertisements for the sensation of loneliness, rather than commercials for a saleable product. The colours are muted - olive green, puce, ochre - an imitation of the decors of 1960s hospitals, schools and institutions, as well as the heightened reality of such Technicolor films as Douglas Sirk's "Imitation of Life" (1959). It is a Northern Hemisphere, Protestant world of wood veneer, wallpaper, linoleum and furniture upholstered in vinyl; a world of snapped elastic, broken promises and the all-pervading odour of boiled cabbage.

Dull rain spatters against the window, a device linking the six interiors. In Rain, we see cold-blooded creatures on display (unlike the joyfulness and sensuality demonstrated by the elderly models in Olaf's series Mature, 1999). It is as though we were looking at sluggish gold-fish in an aquarium, their reality separated from ours by a pane of glass. Nor is there any direct contact between the various models. Olaf's comment is that everyone has an invisible wall built around them, be it self-constructed or imposed by society.

"It all began with the drawings of Norman Rockwell. I like that sort of nostalgic feeling. Originally, I wanted to do something really happy, up-beat, after all the depression of my last series, Separation (2003). So the starting point was that everybody was going to be beautiful, and that I would ask the models to act funny. But then it somehow became terrible. I realized this was a world which has vanished. So instead, I radically simplified the images. Now, everybody is just waiting for nothing, it's the moment after happiness. I suppose after Separation, comes the well of loneliness. It's also been a difficult process because for the first time, I have worked without purposely using eroticism or any sexual jokes."

The two dispirited cheerleaders in Gym show none of the fervour usually associated with contact sports. The innate irony of a morose cheerleader reveals much about Olaf's particular brand of humour. Similarly, in Ice-cream Parlour, in an interior of polished steel and drab khaki, even the dog (obviously a mongrel) looks slightly down at the paw. The sullen boy-scout holding a melting icecream cone, seems immune to the joys of a sweet, summer's treat.

Dancing School is a dreary party which no one attends. The evening has been carefully mapped out, right down to the dance-steps printed on paper and placed neatly on the floor. Sheet music is open on the piano. It is just after six in the evening, but despite the party hats, this is an event reserved for eternal wall-flowers. The mood in this room is in sharp contrast to the antique print of dancing damsels at play, hanging on the wall behind the two isolated guests.

The dreadful silence of unspoken emotions also weighs heavily in Boardroom. Office politics become a mute melodrama, enacted by what we can only assume is a secretary and her love-struck boss. Meanwhile, in Hairdresser, the cheerful posters for beauty products belie the sodden atmosphere of a salon without clients on a wet day. The hairdressing salon, usually a lively place of gossip and activity, contains only a sad barber and a woman with sore feet.

Bedroom depicts the plight of the single white male. A pale-skinned, athletic youth stands alone in an attic, dressed only in his briefs and a pair of old socks. Although his face is expressionless, the impression is one of loneliness and embarrassment. Gradually you realise he is in someone else's bedroom. A cast-off 1960s ballgown lies rumpled on the carpet. An open wardrobe reveals the prim clothes of a maiden aunt. Sheer stockings draped over a chest of drawers hint that maybe this youth conceals shameful secrets about his true identity. Nothing, though, is obviously stated.

The theme of painful silence is further explored in Olaf's short film, Rain (5 minutes). This brings together several of the characters who appear alone in the photo series. They are seated around a dinner table, while the black "maid" holds a roast turkey on a platter. The film contains citations from the photo series, and vice versa. "I steal from wherever I can," says Olaf.

Tensions lurk below the apparent perfection. It is a formal tragedy. The actors' expressions are significant, but significant of what? Boredom? Insecurity? Perplexity? Anger? Embarrassment? Terrifying anticipation? It seems to be a Thanksgiving feast, but what is there to give thanks for? The clock ticks, the rain drips down the window, no food is served. There is the atmosphere of jangled nerves and unexpressed cruelty, where the biggest threat is the threat of the unknown. The viewer has to invent a storyline, but the scenario is heartless.
Nothing begins, nothing happens. The action stops before the symphony starts.
"Now, in my films and photos, I like to create a whole environment, to build an atmosphere. With Rain, it really comes together - the film explains something about the photos, the photos explain the film, but what it all actually explains isn't clear. As a viewer, you start to think that the six photos are somehow connected. Perhaps all the people are part of the same family. The scenario becomes much more open, posing new questions. But this time, with Rain, I honestly don't have a clue what story I am really telling."

Rain is not the bi-product of a dramatic thunderstorm, but the relentless torpor of dismal weather. Beyond the facade of the house, there is nothing. Only the rain.