| 25/05/2007 | Photography | Norway |
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Candida Höfer: Exhibition
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| Posted by Editor Norway | |
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Henie Onstad Art Centre Apr 22 - Aug 5, 2007   Candida Höfer is a representative of an influential movement within German contemporary photography characterised by its objectivity and its documentary and yet spectacular style. Höfer's motifs are public spaces that are void of people. With meticulous precision, long exposure time and without the use of artificial lighting, her photographs of public spaces exude a poetic light and magical atmosphere. Candida Höfer is particularly well known for her many series of rooms in cultural institutions such as museums, libraries, archives and churches. The first exhibition of her works was shown in Norway in 1999, when several of her photograph series of libraries attracted much attention and were rapidly purchased for both public and private collections. The latter have since continued to purchase further works by Höfer. The last exhibition of Höfer's works took place in 2004. The artist has visited Norway several times and has produced photographs featuring Norwegian motifs such as the Viking Ship Museum, the National Museum of Art and different libraries. Considering the great interest in her work here in Norway, the Henie Onstad Art Centre is therefore very pleased and proud to present an exhibition showing a wide range of her work. Even our main exhibition hall is dwarfed by the monumental dimensions of Höfer's oeuvre, but the exhibition will nevertheless feature works both from her legendary series of Brazilian churches, the Bibliothèque nationale de Paris and Norwegian motifs. But the main section of the exhibition focuses on her new series from the Louvre, which was shown for the first time at the Louvre itself in Paris in autumn 2006. The Norwegian public will now have the chance to see over half the works in this magnificent series of 18 works at Høvikodden. Below is an extract from the article written by the Head Curator of the Louvre, Marie-Laure Bernadac, that appeared in the catalogue accompanying the exhibition of Höfer's Louvre series: Candida Höfer's photographs, devoid of all human presence, are silent at first sight. Nevertheless, they have a strong appeal to the observer, and speak indirectly via the intermediary of a formal language articulated by dominant colours, structural patterns and a rigorous analysis of interior volumes. In a masterly, almost magical way, they bear witness to the strength of architecture and the magnificence of painted or sculpted decoration, and despite (or perhaps because of) the absence of the public, they capture the basic purpose of cultural institutions, such as museums, opera houses, and libraries, which have been her favourite motif for some ten years. These public spaces are the guardians of encyclopaedic knowledge, of memory, of a vanished past, yet at the same time they are places of aesthetic pleasure, of leisure and meditation. Perhaps the secret of the power and the beauty of these images lies in the paradox between presence and absence, between the stripped-down clarity of the image and the mystery emanating from it. Through the skill and precision of her shots, Candida Höfer succeeds in building up a faithful portrait of her architectural subjects. She does not see herself as a photographic archivist making an inventory of public places but as an artist attempting to recreate the first impression that these deserted places made on her. Having already photographed many museums, she turned her attention to the vast universe of the Louvre. Although she knew the old Palais well, for this commission she rediscovered ancient places and the new ones in the Grand Louvre. The set of painting and sculpture galleries that she selected are the result of several visits on Tuesdays, the day the museum is closed. _________________________ Henie Onstad Art Centre Sonja Henies vei 31 NO-1311 Høvikodden Norway TEL : +47 67 80 48 80/81 post@hok.no www.hok.no |