Carsten Lehmann
Curator of the gallery Konsum163/Munich
on the occasion of the exhibition Menschenskinder

faces and traces

Anyone who encounters the sculptures of the artist Olaf Auser unprepared will be surprised by the attention to detail, delicacy and individuality of the figures depicted. Olaf Auser has mastered the art of creating a new realism of the present with an almost renaissance-like skill. Most of his sculpted protagonists are mirror-like, momentary and reminiscent of déjà vu. Figures that seem to the viewer to be embroiled in unfathomable adventures – people like you and me, people who have turned their inner selves inside out and openly display their innermost souls.

The expressive power of faces is at the centre of Olaf Auser’s artistic work. “Heads have always fascinated me. Even as a ten-year-old, I would go to the cemetery and demand that the gravediggers give me a skull. Nonsense, of course, but the fascination of heads has stayed with me ever since. The whole of life is reflected in faces – faces and traces – not only do they rhyme, they also belong together, and so he has become a real headhunter and he(a)donist.

headhunter
headonist,
headache
max-headroom …

A decisive factor in the expressive power of Olaf Auser’s figurative work lies in a traumatic experience that has had a lasting influence on his subject matter and approach. He supplements his highly realistic figures, which at first glance appear friendly and positive or perhaps even somewhat dreamy, with attributes that influence the situational gestures of the figures. Excessive demands, helplessness, pain, but also detachment are expressed here. Olaf Auser himself calls this process “status transfer”, by which he means the reduction of anxiety through the principle of image and counter-image, united in one sculpture.

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