olaf martens
Born in Halle/S. in 1963, studied photography at the Academy of Visual Arts in Leipzig from 1985 to 1990, master student of Helfried Strauß and Wolfgang G. Schröter from 1990 to 1992.
Olaf Martens’ photographs are often associated with the aesthetic of the beautiful young women of lifestyle magazines. Behind the obvious beauty of the photographs, lust, irony and a form of the bizarre can be detected. Martens attempts to see through the mechanisms behind the pictorial content that has solidified into stereotypes. He often photographed in the GDR and in Russia: nuclear submarines ready for the scrap heap, Russian revue theaters, ballet, etc.. The resulting images play with contrasts – decadence and poverty, thick and thin. Martens relies on irony to examine the methods of fiction-making. He draws on motifs from art history as well as banal advertising strategies. The combination of normally incompatible elements leads to calculated coincidences that break with unambiguity and demand simultaneous thinking on different levels. In addition, there are portraits of artists, including Dinos & Jake Chapman, Sarah Lucas, Franka Potente, the group Leningrad or Roland Emmerich, in which Martens seeks to make visible the working method or character of the artist portrayed. Martens lives and works in Leipzig.
work
serie „la mancha“
serie „raumbilder“
serie „nacktes leben 1987 – 1990“
„karmasutra leipzig 2000“
serie „Patina 1984 – 1987“
3 books
Olaf Martens stellt uns drei Bücher vor, die ihn begleiten, inspirieren und beeinflussen.