The Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam is currently hosting “Freedom,” the largest-ever retrospective of Dutch photographer Erwin Olaf (1959-2023). Spanning four decades, the exhibition reveals an artist whose meticulously staged images transformed photography into theater, charged with beauty, tension and control. From early portraits of nightlife and queerness to his later reflections on power and vulnerability, Olaf’s lens captured both the poise and fragility of human presence.

For Olaf, dance was inseparable from photography. The turning point came in 1984 when he met Hans van Manen, already an internationally acclaimed choreographer and photographer, who immediately recognized the younger artist’s instinct for composition. Their meeting marked the beginning of a lasting friendship and artistic dialogue. Dance offered Olaf a language of discipline and precision: each movement, like each frame, had to be deliberate. His extreme close-ups of dancers turned flesh into sculpture, revealing the strain, elegance and sheer labor of performance.

To coincide with the exhibition, Observer met Hans van Manen to revisit those early encounters and the creative partnership that shaped their practices. In our conversation, he reflects on their exchange, the lessons of light and the choreography behind every photograph.

Let’s go back to the start: when did you first meet Erwin Olaf and what struck you about him?

More than 40 years ago. Erwin was working as a journalist for Sek, a queer magazine then. He came to photograph me for an interview, and we started talking right away. The following month, I photographed him. We had no money at the time, but I still remember when he got his first Hasselblad camera. That’s a big moment for any photographer. From then on, we had a fantastic relationship. We talked about photography constantly.

He was 24 then. How do you remember him at that age?

Very curious about art and photography. When he came into my house, he was surprised by what was on the walls. I had an important collection of Robert Mapplethorpe photographs, which I later gave to the Rijksmuseum.

People often call you a mentor in his search for a voice.

We always exchanged ideas, and I had a lot to say about what he photographed. Not criticism, more like real conversation. Erwin may have liked calling me a mentor, but I wouldn’t describe myself that way. We had a deep friendship from the beginning until his death.

But you introduced him to fine art photography…

I talked to him about the power of technique and the magic of light. Sometimes one light is enough to create miracles. I developed 150 ballets and often did the lighting design, so I know light. For me, it wasn’t difficult to get it right when I photographed. Erwin used light differently because he worked on a large scale, which demanded another approach. If you compare his early and late pictures, you see how his lighting evolved. Technique is essential, but once you master it, you have to add your personality. You have to put yourself in.

How did Olaf influence you?

Not so much in my work. I knew what I wanted, and he knew what he wanted. He preferred listening to speaking. He might show me ten pictures, I’d give feedback, but he wasn’t very critical of me. Also, he showed me more than I showed him.

Let’s speak about the exhibition at the Stedelijk.

I’m sure it will be a great success. Many people who have never seen Erwin’s pictures will discover his work. I try to understand how hard it is to organize a retrospective. How do you present a whole life and divide it into rooms? It’s difficult to create a balanced rhythm with photography. Some parts feel full, others minimal. Some good pictures are missing, too. I’m strict because I’ve seen them all.

How about its title, “Freedom?”

Erwin was a freethinker, absolutely emancipated, and that drove him. From the nightclubs to the fight for equal rights and activism. But there’s always a fine line between someone’s life, his work and what ends up in an exhibition.

Some pictures sparked debate at the time for being controversial. How did he handle criticism?

We photographed many nude men, and we found it normal. Early on, there were bad comments because people interpreted the images in stupid ways, but that changed over the last 20 years. Erwin also photographed many nude women, in such a beautiful way that no other photographer in the Netherlands did. Of course, people mostly talk about the men.

In the exhibition, there’s a section on dance, including Dance in Close-Up, made for your 90th birthday. What stays with you from making it?

I spent three weeks showing Erwin documentation of all my ballets, and he chose what to use. Then we spent a full week in the studio with the dancers. I directed them, and Erwin made the pictures. It was a great coordination, and the images became a fantastic book. In the show, there are only slow-motion videos from my works Trois Gnossiennes and Two Pieces for HET. They’re beautiful, but they weren’t easy to film. You have to be precise with the dancers’ positions. One video has a lift, the other a pirouette. You must give exact directions on when and where to start and stop. The dancers need specific energy for a spotless result. These are very technical works. Erwin was always good with video.

This was your last project together…

He loved my ballets, and this was probably the most abstract project he ever did. He usually had a thing for storytelling, but not here. On the last day, I told him, let’s take a picture where we bow. So we stood there, hand in hand like we were on stage, as if everything had finished after seven days of hard work. It’s not easy to be present up there for so long.

His images are theatrical by design. Did he enjoy directing people on set?

Of course. If you look closely, you can find him in all the details. He knew how to compose beautiful pictures. I think of his Im Wald series in the Bavarian woods. I’ve never seen woods like that. Nature is vast, and there’s only one small human. Because of that scale, you feel how majestic the place is. It’s very poetic. He had many such pictures. That personal work ran alongside the commissions and shows the difference between a ‘photographer’ and an ‘artist’.

Olaf once said, “I have become my photographs. What I create is me.” What do you wish people understood about him beyond the images?

That he was open-minded and proactive. He always said what he wanted. I remember he once spat in someone’s face because the man said something terrible. I told Erwin he was wrong and the only thing to do was apologize. A month later, he did. He was reasonable in the end. He spoke with the man, and they settled it. He went far in everything he did in public. An exhibition gives only a tiny sense of who he was. A fantastic person. I loved him very much.

Since his passing, has your memory of him changed the way you watch dance or look at photographs?

The last time I saw him, he had so many ideas—some serious and some scandalous—and he shared them from his hospital bed. It was deeply moving. He was the only person I could truly talk to about photography. It’s strange that he isn’t here, strange to talk about pictures that aren’t there. In choreography, I always set the start and the finish so the piece holds. I try to give my memories of him the same structure, or they fall apart.

Erwin Olaf’s “Freedom” is on view at the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam through March 1, 2026.

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Last week, Brussels Art Week’s inaugural full-city edition, RendezVous, animated the Belgian capital with exhibitions, performances, screenings and talks across more than 65 venues. Founded by curators Laure Decock and Evelyn Simons, the initiative transformed the city into a walkable constellation of art spaces spanning downtown, uptown and midtown neighborhoods. The week pulsed with ambition and wit, balancing international names with local voices and institutional heft with grassroots initiatives. And while many of the art week exhibitions remain open through October, the concentrated energy of the opening days set the tone for the city’s autumn art season, shaking off the summer lull.

Decock and Simons’ manifesto captures the ethos behind the project: “For us and for many, Brussels is a unique place. Conveniently central, discreetly humble—surrounded by big sisters such as London and Paris, but brimming with a creative energy that is ferocious… A city defined by an enriching diversity, a charming chaos, an avant-garde that has been going steady for over 100 years and where new trends inscribe themselves onto a canvas of strong art historical traditions.”

At the heart of the 2025 programming was The Tip Inn, a temporary salon conceived by Zoe Williams as artwork and gathering point. Equal parts dive bar, nightclub and installation, the venue had candlelit tables, satin curtains and an atmosphere pitched between decadence and parody. A monumental print of Jan Sanders van Hemessen’s Prodigal Son (1536) presided over the room, while sausages hung like garlands and a video loop showed a girl casually relieving herself among glasses of champagne. Visitors ordered the artist’s signature whiskey-Montenegro cocktail, pocketed lighters inscribed with “Can I show you my portfolio?” and drifted between conversations, poetry readings, screenings and DJ sets.

Williams, a Marseille-based British artist, has long explored the performative dimension of hospitality. By staging a bar, she foregrounded the dynamics of service, consumption and rebellion, while The Tip Inn itself captured Brussels humor and irreverence, reminding everyone that art weeks need not be confined to white cubes.

RendezVous unfolded across three main zones. Downtown, centered around the city center and Molenbeek, there was a strong mix of historical reflection and contemporary experimentation. At Harlan Levey Projects, Amélie Bouvier’s exhibition “Stars, don’t fail me now!” (on through December 13) examined humanity’s enduring fascination with the cosmos. Working with archival solar images from the Observatoire de Paris-Meudon, the Brussels-based artist transformed deteriorating glass plate negatives into meticulously drawn “photodessinographies.” Graphite and ink captured both celestial forms and the fragile material traces of scratches and fingerprints. Hanging textiles such as Astronomical Garden #1 and #2 extended this investigation into fictionalized landscapes, oscillating between scientific observation and poetic imagination.

Nearby, Galerie Christophe Gaillard opened “Le Contenu Pictural,” Hélène Delprat’s first solo show in Belgium (on through October 31). Borrowing its title from René Magritte’s irreverent ‘période vache,’ the exhibition highlighted Delprat’s own commitment to risk-taking and play. Alongside new works, rarely seen gouaches from the late 1990s testified to a two-decade hiatus in her practice, their intensity sharpened by that rupture. The presentation follows her major retrospective at Fondation Maeght and precedes a forthcoming exhibition at Centre Pompidou-Metz in 2027.

Grège Gallery offered a different model altogether. Founded in 2021 by Marie de Brouwer, the initiative bridges art, design and architecture, and twice annually it hosts site-specific exhibitions in extraordinary locations—from medieval farmhouses to brutalist landmarks—while its Brussels space functions as a showroom and meeting point. For RendezVous, the gallery highlighted this nomadic, cross-disciplinary ethos, underscoring how entrepreneurial visions are reshaping Brussels’ cultural landscape.

Galerie Greta Meert revisited the late career of Sol LeWitt with “Bands, Curves and Brushstrokes” (through October 25). The works on paper from the 1990s and 2000s charted his shift from rigorous geometry to more fluid gestures, balancing spontaneity with systematic logic. Upstairs, the gallery previewed an online viewing room devoted to British artist James White. His forthcoming series “Indoor Nature” features photorealist paintings on aluminum, presented in plexiglass boxes, capturing domestic interiors where plants introduce subtle tension between artifice and vitality.

Ixelles, the heart of uptown Brussels, was buzzing. At Almine Rech, Kenny Scharf’s “Jungle jungle jungle” (on through October 25) presented the artist’s unmistakable universe of cartoonish ecologies and consumerist critique. Scharf, a veteran of the New York Downtown Scene that saw Keith Haring and Jean-Michel Basquiat rise to fame, continues to expand his cosmic pop language. Works such as JUNGLENIGHTZ (2025) exemplified his lush, frenetic engagement with nature, nightlife and dystopian exuberance.

Johanna Mirabel’s “I Wish,” at Galerie Nathalie Obadia through October 25, highlights the tradition of ex-voto painting. Drawing on both European and Latin American precedents, the French artist of Guyanese descent wove together sacred motifs and secular imagery. Scenes of disaster and recovery conveyed gratitude, anchoring her first Brussels solo exhibition in a rich cross-cultural lineage.

Bernier/Eliades Gallery showcased Martina Quesada with “If This Is a Space” (through October 25). Her geometric wall sculptures and pigment-on-paper works established rhythmic systems of variation and resonance. Pieces like The verge was always there (2025) interacted with shifting sunlight in the gallery, blurring distinctions between material presence and atmospheric suggestion.

At Xavier Hufkens, Charline von Heyl’s debut exhibition in Brussels affirmed her reputation as one of the most inventive painters working today. The canvases danced between exuberance and rigor, improvisation and discipline. Rather than resolving into answers, they insisted on painting as an open-ended inquiry—a dialogue as mischievous as it is profound.

Moving toward midtown neighborhoods like Sablon, Forest and Saint-Gilles, Gladstone Gallery presented “In the Absence of Paradise,” Nicholas Bierk’s contemplative still lifes and portraits. Drawn from personal photographs, the Canadian artist’s oil paintings addressed grief, transformation and memory with understated intensity.

At Mendes Wood DM, Julien Creuzet unveiled “Nos diables rouges, nos dérives commotions,” his first Brussels solo show, on through October 25. Anchored by the figure of the Red Devil from Martinican carnival, the immersive installation combined films, wallpapers, sculptures and sound. Creuzet reimagined the masked body as a fluid, untamed entity traversing mythologies and diasporic histories. Rice, tridents and fragmented limbs recurred as potent symbols, layering ancestral spirituality with contemporary politics. His cosmology was unsettling yet emancipatory, opening unexpected pathways of imagination.

Design also had a strong presence. Spazio Nobile staged a joint exhibition by Kiki van Eijk and Joost van Bleiswijk, curated by Maria Cristina Didero. Celebrating two decades of collaboration, “Thinking Hands” highlighted the duo’s whimsical yet precise approach, rooted in Eindhoven’s design culture. Furniture, lighting and installations demonstrated how their practice resists mass production in favor of intuition and shared invention.

Institutional programming added depth. At WIELS, the group exhibition “Magical Realism: Imagining Natural Dis/order” explored ecological precarity through myth and dream. Curated by Sofia Dati, Helena Kritis and Dirk Snauwaert, it assembled more than thirty artists. Highlights included Gaëlle Choisne’s Ego, he goes, a talking fridge filled with decaying goods that critiqued consumer waste while invoking Creole cosmologies. Works by Marisa Merz, Cecilia Vicuña and Jumana Manna reinforced the exhibition’s call for alternative ways of inhabiting the planet.

Outside, Sharon Van Overmeiren’s The Farewell Hotel transformed the WIELS garden into an inflatable castle open to children and adults alike. Referencing pre-Columbian motifs, museological displays and Pokémon, the installation invited visitors to bounce, explore and reconsider what art can be. Its playful verticality epitomized the week’s spirit of porous boundaries between seriousness and delight.

RendezVous demonstrated how Brussels’ art scene thrives on contrasts—between the polished and the raw, the historical and the experimental, the institutional and the independent. It unfolded not just as a showcase of exhibitions but as a lived experience of the city itself, weaving fluidly through neighborhoods and communities. Far from another entry in the crowded calendar of art weeks, RendezVous affirmed Brussels’ singular position in the cultural landscape: cosmopolitan yet intimate, grounded in tradition yet insistently forward-looking. With this momentum, anticipation for next year’s edition is already mounting.

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There are many good reasons to visit San Gimignano—its medieval towers, sweeping Tuscan views, the perfect gelato—but right now, one of the most compelling can be found in a luminous old cistern at the heart of the town. “Present Tense,” the latest exhibition by Arcangelo Sassolino at Galleria Continua, gathers new works that feel both elemental and precarious. Sculptures that move, drip and almost seem to breathe. At their core: oil, glass, steel and time.

Sassolino has long built his practice on the edges of mechanics and poetics. His materials are not simply chosen for their visual qualities but for their capacity to act: to fail, bend, crack or defy expectation. With a career spanning more than three decades and exhibitions at institutions like Palais de Tokyo, the Peggy Guggenheim Collection and, most recently, the Islamic Arts Biennale in Jeddah, Sassolino continues to challenge the static image of sculpture with work that is a choreography of instability and precision. A space where matter becomes metaphor.

In “Present Tense,” he pushes this even further. Fluids spill and settle, steel hovers above fragility and each moment threatens transformation. On a quiet morning, right after a bustling opening, Observer sat down with Sassolino to talk about the physics of presence, the seduction of unpredictability and why letting go might just be the ultimate creative act.

What does ‘present tense’ mean to you?

The title came out of a conversation with my studio manager, David, who’s fantastic with language. We bounced ideas back and forth, and “Present Tense” just felt right. It’s simple, but sometimes that’s what works best. The phrase resonates deeply with the work I’m showing—and with my broader approach to sculpture. I’m drawn to the idea that something has to happen in real time while the viewer is present. I don’t want to hide this intention. I’m obsessed with the passage of time, so I work with materials in a way that they almost become time. The show speaks to this urgency, but also to the paradox: the present is already past by the time we acknowledge it. Like fluid, it slips away.

What can you tell me about the works on view?

There are three main sculptures: rotating steel discs of varying diameters, each coated in industrial oil. This oil never dries. It remains thick, viscous and perpetually in motion. The discs spin continuously, and if they were to stop, the entire installation would collapse. Gravity pulls the oil downward, creating an ever-changing surface. No two moments are the same. It’s a living image in constant flux.

There are also more intimate pieces involving glass and weight. In one, a large granite stone rests on a jar. In another, a heavy steel block presses down on a bottle. These are works I’m especially attached to. They may appear simple, even banal, but the tension they hold is real. The materials are under stress, and their vulnerability is not metaphorical—it’s physical.

The tension in these pieces feels almost theatrical. Do you see them as performative?

I like that idea. They are activated. For me, the work functions like a countdown. You don’t know if it will last another five minutes or five hundred years. That ambiguity creates a real emotional response. There’s a conflict embedded within the material itself, a constant potential for failure. But it’s not just a symbolic gesture. I want that fragility to be factual, not fictional.

What draws you to materials like oil, glass and steel?

Throughout history, artists have tried to capture time using stable materials such as marble, bronze or wood. But fluids, especially industrial oil, are time. The moment you release a liquid from a container, it starts moving. With these rotating discs, I’ve given the oil the chance to be itself: unstable, mobile, unpredictable. It doesn’t want to sit still. It wants to occupy space and shift form. That’s exactly what I’m after. A composition that exists in real time, always transforming.

Does your interest in steel have to do with its strength?

Not exactly. I’m more interested in what happens when materials are placed in impossible relationships. When you put three hundred kilos of steel on a glass bottle, you’re pushing things to their limits. It’s a question of friction, tension, incompatibility. That’s where something meaningful reveals itself. When collapse feels imminent.

Still, there’s a clear sense of control in your installations. How much room do you leave for unpredictability?

There’s always a mix. Some works are carefully tested in the studio with engineers and technicians. We know their limits. But other pieces resist calculation. Their behavior can only be understood empirically, once they’re installed in the exhibition space. Even then, things can shift. That uncertainty is crucial. Each time, there’s a genuine possibility that something might happen—or not.

Do you enjoy that unpredictability?

Very much. Life itself is unpredictable. We don’t choose who we are from the start, and everything can change in an instant. My work needs to reflect that instability.

What do you think is revealed when a system is under pressure?

I believe the artist is like an antenna, picking up signals from the world around them. We absorb technology, science, politics and emotional currents. All of that filters into the work, often without conscious intention. I don’t always create from a rational place. Sometimes I feel like a witness to my own mind, just watching ideas form and unfold. I’m not trying to represent the world, but I can’t help but reflect it. Artists can’t escape their time—they’re products of it.

Some viewers have linked your work to the fragility of contemporary society. Is that a fair reading?

It’s not where I begin from, but I understand why people go there. Especially now, when everything feels uncertain, it’s easy to see these precarious objects as metaphors for social collapse. I’m not trying to illustrate that concept directly, but if the work evokes those feelings, I welcome it. The work is already a subject in itself. It doesn’t need to be explained.

You’ve said that art is about shaping the future. How do you see your role as an artist in this moment?

I’m not sure artists are necessarily ahead of their time, but I do think we have a unique ability to condense the present into form. That said, I do feel a responsibility to push forward, to move beyond tradition, even the rich tradition of Italian art I come from. The challenge is to find new solutions, embrace new technologies and produce forms that make sense in today’s world. The chaos and instability in these fluid works mirror the world we’re living in. That’s not intentional, but it’s inevitable.

What did you have to let go of to arrive at “Present Tense?”

Letting go is crucial—for artists and people in general. One of the works in the show is titled No Memory Without Loss. It’s about the idea that in order to remember, you must also lose something. One part of the sculpture remains intact, but another part drips away. It’s a form of disappearance.

To move forward, I’ve had to release past ideas and open myself to new possibilities. I honor my journey, but I believe that letting go is the most constructive way to face the future.

Arcangelo Sassolino’s “Present Tense” is on view at Galleria Continua through August 31, 2025.