Olaf Hajek (b. 1965) is a German artist who lives and works in Berlin. After he finished his degree in graphic design at the University of Applied Sciences in Düsseldorf, he moved to Amsterdam and began to work as a freelance artist. A technically perfect illustrator, he creates enchanting visual patterns, scenes and creative characters in which nature and artifice are intertwined. African traditions, Indian temple art, South American folklore, and pop culture are all expressed in new ways in his almost surreal tableaux. His personal work has been exhibited in solo exhibitions in Hamburg, Munich, Berlin, Atlanta and Cape Town. On Olaf Hajek’s works: Henrik and Katherine Wobbe “With his expressive colouration, simple strokes that sometimes recall woodcuts, fantastical metamorphoses between floral and anthropomorphic forms, as well as his cryptic pictorial spaces, Hajek touches emotional spheres which are rarely appealed to in our algorithm-determined rational present but which are existentially important and shouldn’t be repressed - imagination is a vital force.”  Anna Jill Lüpertz “At first glance, the charm of these paintings lies in their combination of delicacy and narrative density, an art that seems to be composed of elements from old field guides and scenarios from a bygone age. (…) Hajek’s art looks far deeper than this. (…) Hajek is concerned with human dreams and inner worlds, an important element of our being since Freud’s discovery of the unconscious. (…) Hajek’s pictures have the appearance both of classicism and great elegance. (…) We are drawn to look more closely at the scenes, familiar and yet so exotic, to enter this fairy-tale world."