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COmmUNiCATiON ARTs PHOTOGRAPHY ANNUAL 54

Olaf Hajek Williams-Sonoma lg2 Exhibit

Periscopic

July/August 2013 Twenty-Four Dollars www.commarts.com

HAJEK

Olaf

By Tiffany Meyers

T

he range of influences people see in the work of Berlin-based Olaf Hajek is staggeringly wide. Giuseppe Arcimboldo, Frida Kahlo and so on across the ages. In part, it’s because he’s so versatile—surreal, primitive and precise all at once. But Hajek doesn’t paint in terms of references. He paints in remembered collages—drawn from pretty much everything he’s ever seen.

His body of work teems with figures whose faces, beards or bouffant hairdos are comprised of organic matter: lyrical clusters of flowers, rivers, birds and fruits. You are probably right to detect a whiff of Arcimboldo’s sixteenth-century “composite heads” here, but it’s just a whiff. In these works, Hajek is expressing his own, very modern vision—the idea of the universe within, the “secret garden” of our internal lives.

For example, there is Flowerhead and Black Antoinette—also the names of his 2009 and 2012 monographs, respectively. He seems to have put these figures through a kind of transcendental X-ray machine. And now we can view the innards of their souls: the fear, love, ambition, despair and hope that otherwise hides behind flesh and bone.

When Hajek does make specific historical art references, he draws original, sometimes politically charged, conclusions. Consider Black and White Adams, part of Hajek’s 2011 Cape Town exhibition, Dark Clouds Are Gathering. Absent Eve and bedecked with fig leaves, these two Adams—one black, the other white—strike Jan Gossaert poses in the Garden of Eden.

But Gossaert isn’t an “influence.” The Flemish painter has just provided a convenient springboard, which Hajek uses to challenge norms of race and gender.

Ultimately, he has more heart for unknown naïve and outsider artists than for Romanticism or the Renaissance. His allegiance to American and African folk art traditions manifests in his preferred medium, acrylic on cardboard or wood, and in the way he messes with proportion and perspective.

In a 2007 illustration for Germany’s NEON magazine, authors like J.D. Salinger, Thomas Pynchon and Peter Hoeg float away from land on a raft, heading toward the comforts of their (ironically well-publicized) reclusion. Hajek captures each writer’s likeness, but plops their faces atop distorted bodies. A flat, geometric star/sun, which might have been plucked from a colonial American quilt, hangs in the sky.

Right: Illustration for a window display of Montblanc jewelry. Carlo Giordanetti, art director; Montblanc, client.

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EDITORIAL 1 Klaus Nigge, photographer Kathy Moran, senior photo editor National Geographic, client “When flamingo chicks are a few weeks old, parents leave them in a creche and go in search of food, taking turns coming back day and night to feed them. Though watched by a few adults, the young are vulnerable to predators such as dogs and jaguars. This is one example of how working as a flock may help flamingos survive.”

2 Scott McDermott, photographer Michele Romero, photo editor Entertainment Weekly, client Fans freaking out at a One Direction concert in Dallas, Texas. Shot on assignment.

3 Bryce Duffy, photographer Brent Rollins, art director Gina Batlle, photo editor Complex, client Cover and inside pictures for “Balancing Act,” a profile of musician and rapper Wiz Khalifa and his rise to fame.

Communication Arts | www.commarts.com

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UNPUBLISHED 1 Andy Anderson, photographer Edward Leida, creative director Town & Country, client Future article about Oxford, Mississippi, and its music culture.

Blues legend T-Model Ford shown.

2 Val Proudkii, photographer Waves crash along the Malecón as kids play in the surf in Central Havana. © Val Proudkii

3 Jim Hughes, photographer Personal project capturing modern daily life in Hong Kong. © Jim Hughes

4 Brian Minnich, photographer Wendy Wallenberg, producer Dog and Lil’ Popa. Family business, passing knowledge to the next generation in a very committed way. © Brian Minnich

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