Ronny Gabriels Photography

Last Saturday, a new exhibition called “Eye Candy 1984-2009” started in Antwerp’s Photography museum.  The featured artist is the well-known but quite controversial Dutch photographer Erwin Olaf.  If you don’t know the guy, check out his website. 

Since Erwin Olaf thinks of himself as an artist, the object of his work is to make you think.  All good art makes it’s spectators think about what it is they are looking at, how it makes them feel and maybe most importantly, if they like it or not.  As an artist, his photographs do not include pictures of reality.  He tries however to put his own vision into a photograph, his own dreams, feelings and thoughts.  And I can only tell you one thing, … not all of the thoughts or feelings portraiyed are fluffy happy thoughts.  There are quite a lot of dark and confronting photographs there. 

All this is not to say that I didn’t like the exhibition.  I liked it a lot as a whole.  There was more than one photograph that I didn’t like, but if the purpose of his work is to make you think, mission accomplished.  To my own surprise, I stumbled upon some personal boundaries of taste.  By which I mean that there were some pictures that at first I couldn’t agree with, that in my opinion were “over the top”.  This surprised me because normally I’m quite open minded when it comes to most expressions of art, but here I was confronted with a little known side of myself.  Calling it my “conservative” self would be a little harsh, because if I was conservative, a lot more of the pictures would have shocked me.  But it was a side that can think of a piece of art as on the edge of tastelessness.  Now don’t go thinking the work is “shocking” in todays standards.  There is nothing there that you haven’t seen anywhere else, but still it raises the question whether to call it art.  Well, the fact that it made me think about it all means to me that it is and I even appreciate those photographs for it a lot.  So coming out of the exhibition, I liked the pictures I liked and appreciated the ones I didn’t.  I don’t think a bigger complement can be given when it comes to art.

So my recommandation is, go and have a look at it.  Form your own opinion about it, think about it and look at every aspect of it.  It opened my eyes a little more, and I hope it can do the same for you.  Whether it works for you or not, it’s a very good exhibition none the less.

Information:
Exhibition “Eye Candy 1984-2009” by Erwin Olaf
February 7th, 2009 until June 7th, 2009
Fotomuseum Antwerpen
more information here.