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Candida Höfer: Architecture of Absence
January 25 - April 17, 2005Candida Höfer: Architecture of Absence presents German artist Candida Höfer in her first United States retrospective. For over 30 years, Höfer has been photographing rooms in public places that are centers of cultural life, such as libraries, museums, theatres, cafes, universities, historic houses, and palaces. By capturing exquisite detail, she elevates these common spaces to the status of renowned historical spaces. At first glance the beauty of the work distracts the viewer from what is missing—human activity—but the work hardly feels empty. Seen as a group, the rhythmically patterned images of this exhibition present a universe of interiors constructed by human intention and embedded with social history. By providing a window through which we can examine the interior architecture, Höfer’s images enable us to discover how a space maintains physical and social presence. The uncommonly beautiful aspects of light, color, and pattern readily hold our interest and infuse implied human activity into the space. In the spaces of a national library or trendy hotel, Höfer finds an “almost magical presence of things.” She traces her preoccupation with architecture to the devastation she saw as a child growing up in Cologne, Germany. As an adult, she remains interested in the interior spaces of cultural centers, but the absence of activity she captures references a world that cannot be ordered by her lens.
The exhibition's fifty photographs are accompanied by a seminal catalogue published by the Aperture Foundation, which includes essays by co-curators Constance W. Glenn, Emeritus Director of the University Art Museum; Mary-Kay Lombino, former Curator of Exhibitions at the University Art Museum; and Virginia Heckert, former William and Sarah Ross Soter Curator of Photography at the Norton Museum of Art.
This traveling exhibition is co-organized by the University Art Museum, and the Norton Museum of Art. Exhibition tour venues include:
University Art Museum, California State University, Long Beach: January 25–April 17, 2005
Norton Museum of Art, West Palm Beach, Florida: October 1, 2005–January 1, 2006
Frye Art Museum, Seattle, Washington: January 21, 2006–April 16, 2006
Institute of Contemporary Art, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA: May 5, 2006–August 13, 2006
Museum of Art, Brigham Young University, Provo, Utah: September 14, 2006–January 6, 2007
Knoxville Museum of Art, Knoxville, Tennessee: February 23–May 20, 2007
Image Credit: Installation of Candida Höfer: Architecture of Absence, January 25, 2005, University Art Museum, CSULB.
