Olaf Hajek
Berlin, Germany
Playground
40cm x 59cm - 16 x 22 in. Signed & Numbered
Giclee on 330gsm 100% Archival Cotton Paper
The juxtaposition of familiar objects with less familiar elements drawn from a variety of past sources has been remarked upon often by viewers and critics of Olaf Hajek's paintings. To be sure, it is a fairly common motif or device in modern art and one that has been employed by any number of talented hands over the years. In Hajek's case, however, there is a subtle undertone of emotion in his pieces that can only be described as registering somewhere between ordinary regret and a more poignant sense of dismay over some gradual malaise imposing itself on human existence.
In PLAYGROUND, for example, the childlike figures appear at first glance to be as innocent as the cherubim or putti that Renaissance painters drew (almost as an afterthought) in their broad and expansive canvases. Here, however, the blithe mood is arrested by what appears to be a scene of frozen hostility - the "angels" are bored with their games in paradise and seem focused on the possibility of a more visceral enterprise. And why does the flora appear poisonous? What hunger is prompting that beetle to a higher ascendancy and a more propitious view.
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