Artist: Erwin Olaf

Baró presents Against Time by artist Erwin Olaf. The exhibition is part of Mallorca PhotoFest, an international festival dedicated to photography and contemporary image-making which, in its inaugural edition, brings together galleries, institutions, and cultural spaces across the island through a program of exhibitions and activities.

Essay by Esmeralda Gómez Galera

Against Time offers a focused approach to Erwin Olaf’s practice, centered on his still life production. The exhibition brings together a series of small-format photographs of flowers produced between 2006 and 2021, highlighting one of the most contemplative aspects of his work.

Drawing on Roland Barthes’ reflection on photography as the record of something that has occurred only once, the exhibition explores the relationship between image, time, and finitude. The flowers appear in precise compositions, emerging from vases that merge with their surroundings, while their contours are defined against neutral, and at times geometric, backgrounds. Suspended and seemingly still, these images foreground photography as a trace of something in the process of disappearing.

By returning to a single motif, Olaf works through repetition and subtle variation. In this gesture, the exhibition unfolds as a meditation on time and its resistance.