Exhibition Opening - Erwin Olaf: Bigger Than Life at Hamiltons Mayfair (London)

Erwin Olaf: Bigger Than Life
Hamiltons Mayfair – Nov 14 to Feb 01, 2025 London (UK)

Hamiltons is pleased to present Erwin Olaf: Bigger Than Life, a celebration of Olaf’s life and photographic oeuvre. The exhibition presents important works from across the artist’s four-decade career, including works from series such as Chessmen, Im Wald, Palm Springs, Paradise and Grief, alongside a selection of self-portraits. It is a monumental celebration of the artist’s contribution to the visual arts, and of his long-term close friendship with Hamiltons Gallery.

Last conversations.

Erwin Olaf passed away in 2023. In one of the artist’s last conversations with Shirley den Hartog, his right hand and studio manager, he said that he wished to be remembered as ‘bigger than life’. This show pays homage to this wish.

LGBTQ+ community.

During his lifetime Olaf was internationally renowned as an artist whose diverse practice centred around society’s marginalized individuals including women, people of colour, and the LGBTQ+ community. In 2019, following the acquisition of 500 works by in the Rijksmuseum, Olaf became a Knight of the Order of the Lion of the Netherlands. On the occasion Taco Dibbits, the director of the Rijksmuseum, called Olaf “one of the most important photographers of the final quarter of the 20th century”. In Autumn 2025, the Stedelijk Museum will be unveiling a major retrospective of Olaf’s works, hailing him “a free-thinker, and a tireless advocate for equal rights and freedom of expression.”

Photographic series.

The walls are adorned from almost floor to ceiling with Olaf’s works, spanning across years and photographic series. The magnitude of the show is a metaphor for the magnitude of Olaf’s legacy; an ode to Erwin Olaf as ‘bigger than life’.

Robert Mapplethorpe and Helmut Newton.

Influenced by artists such as Robert Mapplethorpe and Helmut Newton, Olaf’s early works were marked by a distinct subverting of social norms, challenging of taboos, and exploration of sexuality in modern society. Olaf started his career while living in a squat in Amsterdam by documenting 1980’s nightlife, but soon explored his own series and subjects in both black-and-white and colour. As his career progressed, he began shooting surrealist tableaux style images, adopting the role of both director and photographer, opting for a cinematic style embedded with stillness which seeks to express the sitter’s genuine emotions and neuroses.