Depth and Surface. Scientific Tableaux in Dialogue with Olaf Holzapfel

27.9.-1.12.24 / Oktogon der HFBK / Dresden

The starting point for the "Tiefe und Fläche" exhibition is the more than 40 university teaching and research collections of the Technische Universität Dresden and the Dresden University of Fine Arts. These collections contain models, teaching panels, moulages, preparations and objects of other genres that have been produced or collected over the last 200 years with special didactic or scientific intentions for teaching and research. The exhibition focuses on the hitherto little-examined genre of the tableau: display boards or boxes with arrangements of exhibits.
In combination with these "object tableaus", works created and arranged especially for the project by the artist Olaf Holzapfel (*1967 in Dresden, lives in Berlin) can be seen. Olaf Holzapfel In addition to sculptures, paintings, works with natural materials such as the "hay pictures" and models from the past 20 years, he is also showing a new half-timbered work. The exhibition examines the tableau as a form of order and display as well as Holzapfel's artistic reference to it from several angles. This encounter with the historical "object-tableaux" opens up new perspectives on contemporary living spaces and their history, on that "in-between" in the relationship between man, nature, thing and time.

Holzapfel has designed a presentation for the Pentagon West that brings together acrylic glass folds, digital, hay and straw pictures, paintings and a photographic series on a stay in Japan. Including models from the Mathematical Collection and herbarium specimens from the collection of the Botanical Garden of the Technical University of Dresden as well as works by the installation and conceptual artist Franz Erhard Walther (*1939 in Fulda, lives and works in Fulda) and the glass artist Veronika Beckh (*1969 Forchheim, lives in Berlin) has created three artistic tableaux. Under the headings "Plants", "Geometric-Mathematical Forms or Forms with Gravity" and "Information and Spatial Drawing", they deal with elementary aspects of world-building. The themes addressed include the emergence of the 'digital world' and the simultaneous questioning of production and life practices against the backdrop of the climate crisis and socio-political reorganizations.

Im Herzstück der Ausstellungshalle schließlich begegnen sich die wissenschaftlichen und künstlerischen Exponate und werden in einem raumgreifenden Fachwerk von Olaf Holzapfel als begehbares Tableau gefasst. Hier sind unter anderem auch eine dreiteilige Arbeit von Karl-Heinz Adler (1927–2018) sowie das Modell eines Wassergöpels aus der TU Bergakademie Freiberg zu sehen.
(Text: TU Dresden)

KuratorInnen: Gwendolin Kremer, Kirsten Vincenz, Dr. Jörg Zaun 

Opening: 26.09.2024, Atrium of Albertinum, Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden

https://tu-dresden.de/kustodie/ausstellungen/aktuell/tiefe-und-flaeche-im-dialog-wissenschaftliche-tableaus-und-olaf-holzapfel