ROYAL BLOOD
BilbaoArte. From March 26th to May 18th, Bilbao.
Erwin Olaf (Hilversum, Holland, 1959) is one of the most innovative artists currently working in the field of photography and one of the most interesting exponents of the new generation of artists who are busy tearing down the traditional barriers between different artistic disciplines. Over the past few years, the works of a whole new generation of artists, together with different fronts from the Academy, are redefining the concepts of artists and art, stretching the boundaries between the frontiers of plastic arts, fashion, pop music, publicity and other disciplines that were previously considered as being of "secondary importance". These frontiers are currently being systematically evaluated and are no longer considered as being completely watertight. In this particular sense, the case of Erwin Olaf is particularly illustrative.
Erwin Olaf enjoys recognised international prestige not only in the field of contemporary art, in which he has been awarded outstanding prizes for his publicity campaigns for Levi's, Diesel and Rifle, but he has also collaborated with fashion designer Walter van Beirendonck (WALT) and the Dutch National Ballet. Together with famous architects, he has undertaken the decorative design of prisons and public toilets. He also shoots spots, documentaries, video-clips, designs record covers and posters for film and theatre festivals and co-directs TV programmes and experimental films. However, this apparent dispersion of formats is conceptually unified.
Erwin Olaf always casts a critical eye over the social environment that frequently ironically serves as a strategy to be able to question the cannons of classical beauty and traditional sexual morale. Throughout his career he has dedicated himself to exploring, analysing and questioning the concepts of prevailing beauty. Thus, in 1995, with his series of portraits called "A Mind of Their Own", he exhibited 18 extremely beautiful portraits of people with mental deficiencies. In his recent series, called "Fashion Victims", he explored the use of naked skin with commercial motives. In "Mature", a devastating criticism of the exclusion of old age as a desirable social value, a series of impressive women aged between 60 and 90 years of age evoke the clothes and postures that have made the most well known super-models of the past few years famous. Another of the reoccurring themes in the work of the artist is the fascination that violence exercises in our societies.
In "Royal Blood", the series exhibited, the artist has converted eight historical celebrities, who remain in our collective memory for either their lives or their brutal deaths, into blonde Hollywood film stars. Julius Caesar, Pompeii, Marie Antoinette, Luis II of Bavaria, Sissy, the Tsarina Alexandra, Jackie O and Lady Di make up this celebrity portrait gallery belonging to the dominating classes. The peculiarity of this gallery, however, is that it is made up of a series of portraits of dead bodies. There is only one exception: Jackie O who, though she died of cancer, lived her bloodiest moment when her husband was shot and assassinated sitting in a black limousine in Dallas. Jackie O's portrait comprises two photographs, laid out according to the typical "before" and "after" shots of beauty product advertisements. The first shows the First Lady 3 seconds before fire was opened up on JFK, while the second photograph was taken 3 seconds after the fatal attempt and shows her impeccable Chanel outfit spattered with specks of the president's brain. The commercial use that has been made of this figure is comparable to the case of Lady Di. Both were exploited commercially as consumer products. In "Royal Blood", Lady Di has the symbol of the Mercedes company encrusted in an arm. But, behind the candy white backgrounds, as in Hitchcock's films, the innocent blonde he uses as models hides the pain and guilt of a predestined destined. In the instances of Marie Antoinette, Luis II and the Tsarina, for example, their isolation from society and their ignorance of the political panorama outside the doors of the palace were just as determining in their deaths as the bullet or the blade that physically put paid to their lives. On the other hand, the death cult of traditionally Jewish-Christian societies with their maximum exponent of the crucified figure of Christ and the worship of martyred saints also has a role to play in this series. In spite of the fact the characters lay oozing blood, the models pose serenely, radiating a sort of spirituality more familiarly seen in religious icons. But the true star of "Royal Blood" is violence. "There is no doubt that we live in a violent society" said Erwin Olaf, "but life was probably much more terrible in the past. This work aims to represent that part of history." Julius Caesar and Pompeii are two clear examples of the bloody atmosphere that used to reign in Ancient Rome. With these eight, "gore-fashion", exquisitely portrayed dead bodies (the response to the sight of blood is one of the most primitive feelings of human senses), the artist ponders on the use of blood as spectacle and on how legends and myths are forged by the use of terror. With the irony typical of his style and a mordant "camp" sense of humour that is associated with gay culture, the artist transforms the characters into dazzling platinum blondes to call attention to how dominating classes have imposed their aesthetical values. At the same time as he tackles the category of social class, those social-historical circumstances leading to these assassinations and violent deaths emerge to assume a more prominent, central role.
Xabier Arakistain. Exhibition curator.
