“I really enjoy this nostalgic mood that we feel when we watch old photographs of warm tones and pastel colours. That makes me remember: my feet sinking into the sand, the taste of sea salt on my lips, the heat of the sun on my skin, the wind in my hair. During summer, I often have a feeling of melancholy, like if I was spectator of my own life, like if I was watching these moments of poetic insouciance from distance.
I hit the road to lose myself into the Californian desert. I enjoyed motel pools and I dived into the floral and sensual ambiance. Plants, water, and women are subject of this new series.”
Since 2006, Ayline Olukman has found her inspiration in travels around the world, but she never ceases to traverse the United States, fueled by its infinite expanse, and the subsequent sensation of always being able to lose oneself there.
Her works are an invitation to follow her. She offers us a heightened degree of sensuality in her art. The spectator is lured into an imaginary film like world, slightly but subtly connected to reality.
The beautiful and timeless images of Ayline Olukman are constructed through a combination of photography, painting and screen printing, thus generating poetic, almost unreal compositions. The photographic element creates the foundation upon which multiple layers of paint and glaze are applied, which serve to distort and simultaneously enrich the original image, thus revealing a new dimension of understanding.
Ayline Olukman was born in Strasbourg in 1981. She lives and works in Brooklyn on an artist residency. Graduated from les Arts Décoratifs de Strasbourg, her work has been exhibited worldwide: Glasgow, London, Paris, San Francisco, Dubaï and in International art fairs as Art Shanghai, Scope Basel and NYC, Contemporary Istanbul... In 2012, Ayline Olukman published her first book of photography.