Olaf Holzapfel

AI generated: The image shows a work of art in which a thick, coiled rope rests diagonally on a piece of wood leaning against the wall. The work combines natural materials in a minimalist, sculptural form.

"Lichtbild Linien - Vertikalen Ecke", 2012, hay, ash wood, 225 × 200 × 28 cm | © Olaf Holzapfel

Olaf Holzapfel's exhibition "REGION" at the Leonhardi-Museum in Dresden revolves around the manifold relationships between regional landscapes, materials and the resulting techniques.
He is showing two groups of works produced using traditional techniques: On the one hand, a series of geometric woven hay figures, which refer both to the general motif of rural life and to the Sorbian passion for abstract patterns in traditional costumes. The second is a group of sculptural wooden constructions that explore the formal language of timber framing. For Holzapfel, these wooden constructions represent more than just a practical, traditional canon of forms: they show a way of describing the world in a linear model, reduced to the essentials and visually comprehensible in its contexts. The wooden sculptures make reference to applied architecture such as can be found in Lusatia and the Ore Mountains in a rich variety and, in their uniqueness, reveal knowledge about the respective climatic and topographical conditions.
The exhibition is also a contemporary dialogue between Olaf Holzapfel and other artists from the Dresden region who reacted to the conditions in their own time and after close observation, such as Eduard Leonhardi himself, the photography pioneer Hermann Krone, the constructivist Hermann Glöckner and Curt Querner, an early representative of New Objectivity, who later found his motifs in the everyday life of his home town of Börnchen.

"The landscape and the use of materials: the real theme of this unsentimental dialogue, which runs through the generations and is characterised by divergent world views, could therefore well be the age-old, ever-present "question of technology". And the modern Western mind, with all its dogmatic narrowness and outdated belief in the Cartesian division between nature and culture, must learn to formulate this question anew, to ask it anew, in a newly awakened awareness that this so-called question about technology is also always a question about nature - or rather one that nature itself can partly answer for us. Olaf Holzapfel's work, made of hay and wood and epoxy and ink, contributes to giving it a voice. "
(Dieter Roelstraete in the exhibition catalogue )

Dr Carina Plath spoke at the opening on Friday, 21 September 2012.

We would like to thank the SLUB Dresden, the Hermann Krone Collection of the TU Dresden, the TU Bergakademie Freiberg, the Kulturzentrum Schleife and Fischer Kunsthandel & Edition Berlin, among others, for loans.

KI generiert: Das Bild zeigt eine Kunstausstellung mit einer großen, ungewöhnlichen Holzskulptur in einem hellen Raum mit Parkettboden und weiß gestrichenen Wänden. Die Skulptur besteht aus zahlreichen Holzbalken, die miteinander verbunden sind und eine strukturelle Form bilden.

Olaf Holzapfel - Biographical information

born 1969 in Görlitz
lives and works in Dresden and Berlin

1996 - 2001
Studied painting at the HfBK Dresden under Prof. Ralf Kerbach

2001 - 2002
Research Student, NID Ahmedabad India with Prof. Singanapalli Balaram

2002
Artist in Residence, Columbia University, New York

2006 - 2008
Visiting Professor, Karlsruhe Academy of Art

2008 - 2010
Visiting professor, HfBK Hamburg

Catalogue

A catalogue was published to accompany the exhibition.

Olaf Holzapfel

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