About Structures and Colors Candida Höfer
28.11.19-07.02.20
Candida Höfer (Eberswalde, Germany 1944) presents her individual exhibition About Stuctures and Colors, at Helga de Alvear Gallery. Her work, framed within the tradition of the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf, shows spaces of knowledge, power, congregation and beauty.
The exhibition presents a large-format series of public and semi-public interiors in quite a novel way, made between Moscow and Paris. The absence of the human figure causes a greater prominence of architecture and nature. The exhibition reflects on the representation of national culture and architectural will through elements such as light, structure and color as well as the idea of beauty itself.
For over three decades, Candida Höfer has been producing an extensive number of pictures of the interior of buildings taken when all activity has ceased and they are empty. Using large format cameras, she adopts a cold aesthetic; Her gaze is as neutral and unaffected as possible and therefore ends up producing technically flawless images in depth of details that reveal her formal interest in emptiness and purity. These works are characterized by great formal rigor both in their composition and in the treatment of light. The artist does not resort to retouching, but shows the places as they really are. Our identification with these frames, their functions, location and the date they were portrayed is brief and precise. These simple and peaceful photographic atmospheres strive to capture the historical burden of spaces without embellishing or condemning them.
Candida Höfer studied at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf, first cinema with Ole John and then photography with Bernd and Hilla Becher. Among her individual exhibitions: Folkwang Museum in Essen (1982), Rheinisches Landesmuseum de Bonn (1984), Hamburger Kunsthalle (1993), Galerie de l’École des Beaux-Arts in Valenciennes (1994), Center of Photography at the University of Salamanca (1998), Museum of Contemporary Photography in Chicago (2000), Kunsthalle Nürnberg (2000), Kunsthalle Bremen (2003), Louvre Museum in Paris (2006) and Kunsthaus Hamburg (2007), Amparo Museum in Puebla, Mexico (2018) . Her work has been part of multiple collective exhibitions: Nachbarschaft, Kunsthalle Düsseldorf (1976); Giovani Artisti Tedeschi, Turin Center for Contemporary Art (1995); Ex Libris, Bibliothèque Nationale de France, in Paris (1998); Minimalisms: A Sign of the Times at the Reina Sofía National Art Museum in Madrid (2001); Syncopation: Contemporany encounters with the Modern Masters Hakone, Japan (2019); Civilisatzion: The way we Live Now Melbourne, Australia (2019) Documenta 11 (2002); Moving Pictures, Guggenheim Museum Bilbao (2003); Venice Biennale (2003); International Incheton Women Artist’s Biennale (2007); The International Biennal os Contemporany Art of Cartagena de Indias (2014); Biennale Für Aktuelle Fotografie (2017); 3rd Beijing Biennial Photo (2018). She currently lives and works in Cologne.