AMSTERDAM.- Galerie Ron Mandos is presenting the new group exhibition Nowhere but the Night, curated by Gemma Rolls-Bentley and inspired by the life and work of gallery artist Erwin Olaf (1959–2023). The exhibition Nowhere but the Night runs from 8 November 2025 to 11 January 2026.
The artists featured in the exhibition are James Bartolacci, J. Carino, Amina Cruz, Rainer Fetting, Miles Greenberg, Erin Holly, Leasho Johnson, Isaac Julien, Vidar Logi, Zanele Muholi, Erwin Olaf, Elsa Rouy, Devan Shimoyama, and Zoe Walsh. Alongside the exhibition, a performance program will unfold in collaboration with the Foundation Erwin Olaf.
Coinciding with the Stedelijk Museum’s major retrospective of Erwin Olaf’s work, Nowhere but the Night brings together an international group of contemporary artists to explore themes central to Olaf’s practice—namely, the communities we build and the spaces we create in order to be free. Presented in dialogue with Olaf’s photographs, the works on view are both intimate and uncompromising, capturing the ecstasy and vulnerability of queer experience with tenderness and defiance. Together, they reflect themes of liberation, desire, chosen family, and the transformative potential of nightlife—affirming the cultural and political significance of visibility, pleasure, and presence.
At the heart of the exhibition, a special installation has been dedicated to Erwin Olaf, including previously unseen works that reveal his deep connection to Amsterdam’s queer nightlife. More than a documentarian, Olaf was an instigator—shaping and celebrating the city’s after-dark world with wit, care, and audacious imagination. The exhibition’s title is drawn from Raving by writer and theorist Mackenzie Wark, who describes how trans women, “the Dolls,” find sanctuary on the dance floor, having “nowhere but the night.” Building on this spirit of liberation and care, the group of international artists gathered here echo and expand upon Olaf’s legacy, exploring the search for freedom in all its forms: the safety of chosen spaces, the joy of collective release, the intimacy of solitude. Moving between the club, the street, and the natural world, their works trace diverse geographies of liberation—each revealing how, across time and place, queer life continues to create its own sanctuaries of visibility, desire, and connection.
The Curator: Gemma Rolls-Bentley
Gemma Rolls-Bentley has been at the forefront of contemporary art for almost two decades, working passionately to champion diversity in the field. Her debut book Queer Art: From Canvas to Club and the Spaces Between was a Lambda Literary Award finalist and has been highlighted as a must-read by Them, Dazed, Time Out, The Guardian, Cultured, and the Financial Times.
Her curatorial practice amplifies the work of female and queer artists, providing a platform for art that explores LGBTQIA+ identity. Gemma has curated exhibitions for a range of international galleries and institutions. Current projects include Sea State at Wolterton, Norfolk (on view until 7 December 2025) and She Sells Seashells at the Alice Austen House, New York (on view until 21 February 2026).
Gemma has taught at numerous institutions, including the Royal College of Art, the Glasgow School of Art, and Goldsmiths. She is a juror for the 2025 John Moores Painting Prize and serves on both the Courtauld Association Committee and the Leslie-Lohman Museum Acquisitions Committee.
Erwin Olaf (1959-2023) was known for his diverse practice that centered around society’s marginalized individuals, including people of color, and the LGBTQ+ community. In 2019, Olaf became a Knight of the Order of the Lion of the Netherlands after 500 works from his oeuvre were added to the collection of the Rijksmuseum. Taco Dibbits, Rijksmuseum director, called Olaf “one of the most important photographers of the final quarter of the 20th century”.
In 2018, Olaf completed a triptych of monumental photographic and filmic tableaux portraying periods of seismic change in major world cities, and the citizens embraced and othered by their urban progress. Like much of his work, it is contextualized by complex race relations, the devastation of economic divisions, and the complications of sexuality. Olaf maintained an activistic approach to equality throughout his 40-year career after starting out documenting pre-AIDS gay liberation in Amsterdam’s nightlife in the 1980s.
A bold and sometimes controversial approach earned the artist a number of prestigious collaborations, from Vogue and Louis Vuitton, to the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam. He served as the official portrait artist for the Dutch royal family in 2017, and designed the national side of the euro coins for King Willem-Alexander in 2013. He was awarded the Netherlands’ prestigious Johannes Vermeer Award, as well as Photographer of the Year at the International Color Awards, and Kunstbeeld magazine’s Dutch Artist of the Year. In 2023, His Majesty the King Willem-Alexander awarded him the Medal of Honor for Art and Science of the Order of the House of Orange.
Erwin Olaf exhibited worldwide, including Centro de Arte Contemporáneo de Málaga, Málaga, Spain; Museu da Imagem e do Som, São Paulo, Brazil; Martin-Gropius-Bau, Berlin, Germany; Southeastern Center for Contemporary Art, Winston-Salem, North Carolina, USA; and Museo de Arte Contemporáneo, Santiago, Chile. In the spring of 2019, Olaf’s work was the subject of a double exhibition at Kunstmuseum The Hague and The Hague Museum of Photography, as well as a solo exhibition at the Shanghai Center of Photography. In 2021, Erwin Olaf had his first solo exhibition Im Wald at Galerie Ron Mandos and mounted a large survey exhibition at Kunsthalle München, Germany.
Olaf’s work is included in numerous private and public collections, such as the Rijksmuseum and Stedelijk Museum, both in Amsterdam, The Netherlands; Fonds National d’Art Contemporain, Paris, France; Museum Ludwig, Cologne, Germany; Museum Voorlinden, Wassenaar, The Netherlands; North Carolina Museum of Art, Raleigh, United States; Art Progressive Collection, United States; and the Pushkin Museum, Moscow, Russia.
Miles Greenberg (b. 1997 in Montreal, Canada) is a New York-based performance artist and sculptor. His work consists of large-scale, sensorially immersive and site-specific environments revolving around the physical body in space. These installations are activated with often extreme durational performances that invoke the body as sculptural material. These performances are then captured in real-time before the audience to generate later video works and sculptures. Rigorous and ritualistic in its methodology, Greenberg’s universe relies on slowness and the decay of form to heighten the audience’s sensitivities. The work follows self-contained, nonlinear systems of logic that are best understood in relation to one another.
At age seventeen, Greenberg left formal education, launching himself into four years of independent research on movement and architecture. He has worked under the mentorship of Édouard Lock, Robert Wilson, and Marina Abramović and has been an artist in residence at Fountainhead Arts, Miami (2023); La Manutention at Palais de Tokyo (2019), and The Watermill Center Residency, NY (2017 & 2018) among others. In 2023, Greenberg was featured on the Forbes 30 Under 30 in the Art & Style Category.
He has exhibited and performed internationally at museums and galleries, including The Louvre (Paris), Neue Nationalgalerie (Berlin), The New Museum (New York), Arsenal Contemporary (Toronto), Jeffrey Deitch Gallery (New York), Galleria Continua (Les Moulins) and more. Greenberg’s work has also been included in numerous international art surveys, including the Athens Biennial, BoCA Lisbon, and the Bangkok Art Biennale.
Sir Isaac Julien KBE RA (GB, 1960), a London-born filmmaker and installation artist, is celebrated for his groundbreaking approach to art, seamlessly merging film, dance, photography, music, theater, painting, and sculpture to craft compelling visual narratives through multi-screen film installations. Notably, his 1989 documentary-drama “Looking for Langston” and the Cannes Film Festival Semaine de la Critique prize-winning debut feature, “Young Soul Rebels” (1991), garnered critical acclaim on a global scale.
Julien’s international acclaim extends to prestigious solo exhibitions at prominent venues, including the Barnes Foundation, Smith College Museum of Art, and Bechtler Museum of Modern Art. His works have graced the walls of renowned institutions such as the Museum of Modern Art and the Art Institute of Chicago.
In addition to his artistic pursuits, Julien has made significant contributions to academia, holding key positions at institutions like the University of Arts London and Staatliche Hoscschule fur Gestaltung, Karlsruhe. His educational efforts were further recognized when he was awarded the James Robert Brudner ’83 Memorial Prize and delivered lectures at Yale University in 2016.
Isaac Julien’s dedication to the arts has earned him distinguished accolades, including The Royal Academy of Arts Charles Wollaston Award in 2017 and a knighthood as part of Queen Elizabeth II’s Honours List in 2022. Furthermore, he was honored with the esteemed Kaiserring Goslar Award in 2022.
In April 2023, Tate Britain hosted a comprehensive survey show, presenting Isaac Julien’s illustrious career. This exhibition featured works spanning four decades, encompassing early films and expansive multi-screen installations that delve into the themes of global movement and history. It marked the first-ever presentation of Isaac Julien’s extensive body of work in the United Kingdom. Following its showcase at Tate Britain, the exhibition traveled to K21 in Düsseldorf, with its next destination set to be Bonnefanten in Maastricht, where it will be open for viewing from March 9 onwards.
