Olaf Martens

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Olaf Martens (born September 30, 1963 in Halle (Saale) ) is a German photographer .

Life

Olaf Martens studied photography from 1985 to 1992 at the Hochschule für Grafik und Buchkunst (HGB) in Leipzig (among others with Wolfgang G. Schröter and Helfried Strauss). His contemporaries are the artists of the Leipzig School , including Neo Rauch , Tim Eitel and Tilo Baumgärtel .

Olaf Martens has been making recordings for PR and advertising campaigns for international clients since the late 1990s. He created photo reports and photo contributions for: FAZ Magazin, Der Spiegel, Stern, Harpers Bazar Russia, Focus Magazin, Max, Die Welt, Art, Geo Spezial, Merian, Glamor, Wiener, Park Avenue.

His works include a. represented in the Goetz and FC Gundlach collections.

plant

Olaf Martens' photographs are often associated with the aesthetics of the beautiful, young women in lifestyle magazines. Behind the obvious beauty of the photographs one can see lust, irony and a form of the bizarre.

Martens tries to see through the mechanisms behind the stereotyped image content. He often took photos in the GDR and Russia: scrap nuclear submarines, Russian revue theater, ballet, etc. The resulting images play with opposites - decadence and poverty, thick and thin, seductive women in front of a shabby backdrop, everyday life and the artificial world of the beautiful and the rich. Shoes and cars symbolize people's longings, bras, latex suits, stockings function as fetishes or armor - but always as a symbol of power. Irritations find their way into these constructed imagery full of “icons of the zeitgeist” - the first East German Miss Germany, artist, actor, fitness gurus, formerly highly decorated spy officials, fashion designers, Russian oligarchs. Martens uses irony to examine the methods of fiction formation. He draws on motifs from art history as well as banal advertising strategies. The combination of normally incompatible elements results in fractions based on calculated chance with the unambiguity and demands a simultaneous thinking on different levels.

Martens himself: » My pride is that the men's magazines are still not standing in line for me, even though I offer a lot of the usual set pieces: breasts, buttocks, long legs, etc. The media have an unmistakable sense of where they are no longer served - be it due to slight deviations or self-deprecating reflections. «

There are also artist portraits, including those of Dinos & Jake Chapman, Sarah Lucas, Franka Potente, the Leningrad Cowboys and Roland Emmerich, in which Martens seeks to make visible what is specific to the artist portrayed, his working method or character.

What is completely new, however, is his turn to architectural photography . In contrast to the cool and matter-of-fact aesthetics of his colleagues such as Thomas Ruff or Thomas Struth , who wrest a general character from their motifs, Martens' photographs conjure up the uniqueness of the motifs. Despite their fantastic appearance, the pictures are faithful images of the sometimes curious buildings that the artist locates after a long research.

Martens lives and works in Leipzig.

literature

  • Olaf Martens - photographs, texts by FC Gundlach, Klaus Honnef and Wolfgang G. Schröter . Kilchberg / Zurich 1994.
  • Olaf Martens. Frosty fire. New photographs, text by Klaus Honnef . Rheinisches Landesmuseum, Bonn 1996.
  • Olaf Martens, Peter Lang. Lust and games . Kunsthaus Dresden, Municipal Gallery for Contemporary Art, Dresden 1998.
  • Pictures that were still missing, text by Klaus Honnef . Deutsches Hygiene-Museum, Das Museum vom Menschen, Dresden 2000.
  • Masks & facades. St. Petersburg Perspectives. Olaf Martens photography 1996–2003 . Stuttgart 2003.
  • Of bodies and other things - German photography in the 20th century . German Historical Museum, Berlin; Moscow House of Photography, Moscow; Bochum Museum 2003.
  • Dream worlds backgrounds. Olaf Martens 1984-2004 . Grassi Museum, Museum of Arts and Crafts, Leipzig 2004.
  • Naked life. Nude photography 1983 to 1991. Mitteldeutscher Verlag, Halle (Saale) 2020.

Solo exhibitions (selection)

  • Kunsthaus, Dresden; Barlach Hall K, Hamburg; 2nd International Photo Biennial, Moscow (1998)
  • International Photo Biennial, Goethe Institute, Rotterdam; Photo Museum, Leipzig-Mölkau; Ephraimpalais, Berlin (2000)
  • Grassi Museum for Applied Arts, Leipzig (2004)
  • FFI - Fotoforum International, Frankfurt; New Saxon Gallery, Chemnitz (2005)
  • LUMAS Gallery Berlin; From Russia with Love (2014)

Group exhibitions (selection)

  • Museum of Applied Arts and Crafts, Berlin (1995)
  • Rheinisches Landesmuseum, Bonn (1997)
  • Museum of Arts and Crafts, Hamburg; German Hygiene Museum, Dresden (2000)
  • New Gallery and City Museum, Graz; Grassi Museum, Leipzig; Museum Bochum; Multimedia Art Center (formerly Moscow House of Photography), DHM I German Historical Museum, Berlin (2003)
  • Leopold Museum, Vienna; House of Photography / Deichtorhallen, Hamburg (2006)

Web links