PHOTO:Candida Höfer-Nach Berlin
For the presentation of her work Candida Höfer not only uses traditional photography in various sizes adjusted to the demands of composition, but she also shows her work in projections recalling her early involvement in film and her appreciation of image sequences, an approach she also takes in her book publications which she sees as exhibition spaces ordered sequentially.
By Efi Michalarou
Photo: Neuer Berliner Kunstverein Archive
In her solo exhibition “Nach Berlin”, Candida Höfer arranged 3 projections specially for the space of Neuer Berliner Kunstverein in Berlin, that are showing her work in superimpositions. The title of the exhibition is a quotation from the movie “Emil and the Detectives” (1931), directed by Gerhard Lamprecht, valued by Candida Höfer, which, due to its cinematic portrayal of the city of Berlin and its surprising twists and turns, also the word “Nach” (To / After) can also signify the expectations of the visitors, who are meant to be disappointed, as in the film, because there are no photographs for which the artist became famous. Instead, one can experience new perspectives in the work of Candida Höfer. One projection includes a range of images from the series “Türken in Deutschland” (1979) which compiles everyday scenes from the lives of Turkish “gastarbeiter” in the ‘70s in Cologne, Hamburg and Berlin. This subject raised her interest in the impact of the built environment on people. She turned to public and semi-public spaces ranging from waiting rooms at railway stations, and such diverse spaces as spas, libraries, museums, zoological gardens, banks, opera houses, and theatres, some of them wellknown spectacular cultural icons, others everyday architecture that we may pass without noticing. She also realized that paradoxically the impacts of architecture are most intensely present when people are not in the image. The two further projections “Memories” (2016) and “Berlin” (2016_reflect the artist’s ongoing examination of sites of public life and building structures, as well as, in her most recent works, of color, plane and form, and their dissolution. The more recent photographic works, presented on walls and in showcases, consist of abstracting detail shots. The varying formats of presentation in the exhibition, as well as the shift from static to moving image point to the multiperspectivity in Candida Höfer’s work.
Info: Curator: Marius Babias, The Neuer Berliner Kunstverein, Chausseestrasse 128/129, Berlin, Duration: 3/12/16-29/1/17, Days & Hours: Tue-Wed & Fri-Sun 12:00-18L00, Thu 12:00-20:00, http://nbk.org
