translated and summarized by: Liz Wollner-Grandville,
180208: Sample rooms for room samples
ZKM – Zentrum für Kunst und Medientechnologie: Candida Höfer, Work groups since 1968
Sample rooms for room samples
Over the past decades Candida Höfer’s view of the world has become increasingly dissociated. While in 1968 she captured street scenes, snapshots of a lively but anonymous urbanity, her works created one decade later depict “Turks in Germany” and deal with the everyday life of migrant workers. In family surroundings, in tea rooms, in the park or on the street, the artist objectively and without any prejudice observes how people meet. Especially those people whose home country is elsewhere.
Numerous waiting rooms, those more or less welcoming venues, which have a lot to do with stopping between two different locations, marked another step of her oeuvre, which is involved with the unlimited variations of limited space. The public and half-public places were not specially staged, the encountered light situation was not adapted, the camera stayed on eye-level, only a wide-angle lens provides for the desired conception of the room.
Libraries are among the favourite motives of the extremely reserved artist. She removed herself from people and situations, concentrates on venues and rooms, to position the linear clarity of a room structure, and with this clarity the formats of the photography increased.
The change in Candida Höfer’s work over the last four decades with respect to the way it is presented and the thereby arising new requirements for exhibition space is informative. It ranges from small works grouped in a series to large-scale photography, and the “Prosessions”, in which photographs can only be viewed on a desktop terminal with no further explanation offered.
“Exhibition design and curatorial practice” was at first only meant to be a practical assignment for the working group of the University for Design in Karlsruhe (Hochschule für Gestaltung). It has turned into an interesting overview of the work - selected by the ZKM in collaboration with Candida Höfer: small-scale, classy, and partly unpretentiously displayed.
ZKM – Zentrum für Kunst und Medientechnologie,
Karlsruhe, Lorenzstrasse 19, until 02.04.08
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180208
ZKM - Zentrum für Kunst und Medientechnologie
76135 Karlsruhe, Lorenzstraße 19
Tel: +49-721-8100-0
Email: info@zkm.de
http://www.zkm.de
Öffnungszeiten: Mi - Fr, 10-18 Uhr | Sa - So, 11-18 Uhr
ZKM - Zentrum für Kunst und Medientechnologie
76135 Karlsruhe, Lorenzstraße 19
Tel: +49-721-8100-0
Email: info@zkm.de
http://www.zkm.de
Öffnungszeiten: Mi - Fr, 10-18 Uhr | Sa - So, 11-18 Uhr