Candida Höfer: Uninterrupted Space

EVENT DESCRIPTION

Ben Brown Fine Arts is pleased to announce an exhibition of selected works by German artist Candida Höfer at the Hong Kong gallery, 10 December 2022 to 22 February 2023. One of the first artists to join the gallery’s stable of artists soon after it was established in 2004, this will be Höfer’s twelfth solo exhibition with Ben Brown Fine Arts, and fourth solo exhibition at the Hong Kong gallery. The exhibition brings together an extraordinary selection of photographs of libraries, theatre, museums and palaces, variously located in France, Italy, Mexico, Russia and Spain, all of which illustrate Höfer’s unique ability to capture prominent cultural spaces in sublime silence, void of human presence, focusing on the architectural splendour and majestic timelessness of these public spaces.

Included in the exhibition is Biblioteca Vasconcelos Ciudad de México I 2015, which depicts an expansive public library in Mexico City famed for its transparent walls and intricate labyrinth of balconies and pathways between bookshelves. Capturing the interior unpopulated and flooded with light, Höfer reveals the geometric structure of the space, exalting the library to an abstract form. Another highlight includes Uffizi Firenze III 2008, a virtuosic photograph that portrays the red velvet-lined octagonal room full of High Renaissance treasures at the Uffizi, the Tribuna, with technical precision and compositional symmetry. Pavlovsk Palace Pavlovsk III 2014, from Höfer’s acclaimed St. Petersburg series, depicts a palatial light-flooded room of green marble columns and ornate architectural details, typifying her unique ability to present scenes of opulence with an unsentimental, objective and timeless exactness.

ABOUT THE ARTIST / ORGANISER

Candida Höfer (b. 1944, Eberswalde, Germany)
Candida Höfer began studying at the Düsseldorf Art Academy under the influential photographers Bernd and Hilla Becher in 1976. Höfer’s internationally recognised work has been shown at the Kunsthalle Basel, Basel; Kunsthalle Bern, Bern; Musée du Louvre, Paris; Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin; and The State Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg. Höfer represented Germany at the 50th Venice Biennale (2003), participated at Documenta 11 (2002), and her photographs are part of major museum collections across the globe, including Tate Modern, London; Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris; Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid; Museum Folkwang, Essen; Kunsthalle Hamburg, Hamburg; Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), New York; and The State Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg.