Region
Olaf Holzapfel, “Region – die Technik des Landes“
The land surrounds the city; it is its shell, its mirror, its source, its Other. Rural activities are not secondary or pre-modern but are of equal importance to what we understand as the contemporary, often urban center. After a decade of focusing on virtual spaces and their interplay with public space, Olaf Holzapfel (born 1969 in Görlitz, lives and works in Berlin and Dresden) addresses the relationship between technology and nature. His works explore the transformation of the material into technology, beginning with the originally rural, agricultural aspects for people.
With a series of new half-timbered sculptures, Olaf Holzapfel describes space as a linear model, adaptable and contemporary. A wooden timbered structure can be modified, rebuilt and reimagined. This publication presents a group of sculptural wooden constructions that engage with the formal language of half-timbering. In contrast to these wooden sculptures, the artist presents a series of geometrically woven straw figures. These artifacts, crafted using traditional techniques, refer to the motif of rural life and to abstract patterns found in traditional costumes.
The works mark a distinct minimalism. Both series are also placed in a contemporary dialogue with other artists from the Dresden region who responded to their time: the landscape painter Eduard Leonhardi, the photography pioneer Hermann Krone, the constructivist Hermann Glöckner, and Curt Querner, an early representative of New Objectivity.
Texts by Martin Germann, Peter Lang and Dieter Roelstraete.
Editor: Leonhardi-Museum Dresden, Bernd Heise
Sprache: Deutsch/Englisch
Format: 22 × 26 cm
112 Seiten, ungefähr 70 Farbabbildungen, Softcover, Schutzumschlag
ISBN 978-3-942405-97-3
Januar 2013, 29,90 €