Please join us on Saturday, September 7 to preview the retrospective exhibition Erwin Olaf: Stages. The breakfast reception runs from 9:30am-11:30am at Edwynn Houk Gallery and is an opportunity especially for Armory and out-of-town visitors to see this comprehensive view of Olaf's work. A walk-through of the exhibition will begin at 10:30am. Attendees are welcome to arrive at any time, but we request RSVPs here.
The exhibition includes Olaf’s earliest work from the 1980s that inspired the direction of his work for the subsequent forty years. Olaf’s black-and-white prints commemorate the underground queer scene of Amsterdam, from bodybuilders, drag queens, celebrities, and artists, including his first self-portrait. In these images, Olaf layered props and details for viewers to create their own narratives with his subjects as protagonists, a technique that set the stage for his future work. This show celebrates those later, color series that cemented his role as a leading figure of narrative photography. Hope (2005), Grief (2007), and Gay Couples (2008) are fictive, polished creations made with set design, each of which embody “perfect world[s] with a crack.”
Erwin Olaf’s artwork is in international permanent collections such as the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam; Fonds National d’Art Contemporain, Paris; Museum Ludwig, Cologne; and also circulates on the Dutch Euro coin. In March 2023, Erwin Olaf was awarded the Medal of Honor for Art and Science by the Dutch Royal Family. The Foundation Erwin Olaf was launched in 2024 to continue the artist’s activism for LGBTQ+ and other marginalized communities.
