Palast Rom 1998

Of people and places

In view of the deserted spaces for which Candida Höfer became famous, it’s hard to believe that her artistic interest is primarily dedicated to people. Yet upon second glance, the balanced views into interiors of public buildings such as libraries, auditoriums, music halls, foyers or museums do show that the artist draws close to people by documenting their environments. It’s not the recognizability of a place that stands in the foreground, but the way that architecture and interior fittings reveal the cultural and social environment. As a graduate of the first Becher class at the Düsseldorf Art Academy, Höfer aims to compare the various kinds of spaces. But, she leaves a large space for the individual, for inconspicuous details from which traces of history and change can be read. Höfer’s formal and strictly applied series subordinates itself to the respective order of the space and invites the viewer to take a long, thorough look to understand the inherent structure. They thereby set a mark against the fast consumption of the flood of media images. The view of a hall in a Roman palace in 1998 makes the “almost majestic presence of the things” perceptible. In 2003, Höfer was presented in the German pavilion at the Venice Biennial; the year before she took part in the Documenta11 (in Kassel, Germany). She’s also constantly presented in museums and galleries worldwide.

Petra Prahl