Olaf Hajek

Listings(s)

'Dark Clouds are Gathering'

World renowned illustrator, Olaf Hajek shows a series of new works that draw on the artists impressions of Africa, and combine a diverse range of influences including folklore, mythology, religion, history, and geography. Hajek’s paintings transport us to a world of surreal juxtaposition and rearranged realities to explore a realm that is always strangely off kilter. More than anything else his work explores the opposition between imagination and reality in the context of western cultures.

This is his first exhibition in Africa, and will be accompanied by the release of his first major monograph published by Gestalten.

16 March 2011 - 16 April 2011

Strange Flowers'

Whaiftheworld presents 'Strange Flowers', a solo exhibition of new paintings by Olaf Hajek.
Olaf Hajek is a painter immersed in a world of surreal fantasy and melancholic beauty. Drawing from diverse references such as 60’s African studio photography, renaissance perspective and the Dutch still lifes of the 1600s his work is underpinned by the colour and texture of folkloric imagery.

'Strange Flowers', Hajek’s most recent body of work is a hypnotic tangle of botanical forms and colour. Rendered in acrylic on wood panels, Hajek uses distressed and exquisitely fine mark-making to create a rich surface patina. Woven into the fabric of the work the image of the flower is used as a seductive yet contradictory metaphor for fertility, poison, growth and decay.

Much like the Dutch painters of the 16–18th century his work looks at the brevity of life through capturing the vital essence of living forms and the continuing struggle for life where beauty is made more precious because of its transience. Through juxtaposing the human figure with his incandescent kaleidoscope of flora and fauna, Hajek looks at humanities fragile relationship with nature and its cycles of birth and death.

14 March 2013 - 20 April 2013