Candida Höfer. Käthe Kollwitz Prize 2024, Exhibition view Akademie der Künste, Berlin, 2024, photo: Roman März, © VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2024

Candida Höfer
Käthe Kollwitz Prize 2024

Exhibition

Candida Höfer’s oeuvre has developed over five decades and is part of today’s photographic avant-garde. Her large-format works depict public and semi-public spaces like historical libraries, archives, storage facilities, palaces, museums, opera houses, zoos and other buildings – places where people meet and communicate, places of memory and knowledge, relaxation and recreation. However, her images also focus on architectural details like ventilation shafts and wall structures. Höfer is interested in how people are steered, directed or held back by architecture and in how spaces accommodate the visitors they receive.

The twelve casts of Auguste Rodin’s The Burghers of Calais, installed in museums and sculpture gardens around the world, prompted the photographer to shoot a series of images, which she presented in 2002 at documenta11 in Kassel. She was interested in the contradictory nature of the spaces in which the casts are now shown; even during Rodin’s lifetime, his “heroic monument” was a source of controversy. The dialectics of tradition and modernity, representation and usage, are clearly evident in Höfer’s pictures.

Work complexes like series on Dresden (1999–2002), Weimar (2004–06), the Louvre (2006), Portugal (2006), Bologna (2007) and Berlin (2020–22) – along with the neo-baroque interior of Komische Oper and the Neue Nationalgalerie as tokens of Modernism in Berlin – are given specific geographical titles. However, her focus is not on the cultural differences between the spatial structures that have emerged over the centuries; instead, Höfer investigates architectural concepts and how they have been used over time to manipulate human experience. The artist herself describes her works not as architectural photos but as portraits of spaces.

An accompanying publication will include texts by Karin Sander and Matthias Sauerbruch.

With the kind support of the Kreissparkasse Köln, which funds the Käthe Kollwitz Museum Köln.

 

As part of

 

Logo of Berlin Art Week, taking place from September 11th to 15th in 2024.

 

Media Partners

 

Logos of media partners: Photography in Berlin, tip Berlin and radio eins RBB.

Candida Höfer. Käthe Kollwitz Prize 2024, Exhibition view Akademie der Künste, Berlin, 2024, photo: Roman März, © VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2024

Candida Höfer. Käthe Kollwitz Prize 2024, Exhibition view Akademie der Künste, Berlin, 2024, photo: Roman März, © VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2024

Candida Höfer. Käthe Kollwitz Prize 2024, Exhibition view Akademie der Künste, Berlin, 2024, photo: Roman März, © VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2024

14 Sep — 24 Nov

Tue – Fri 2 – 7 pm
Sat, Sun & Public Holidays 11 am – 7 pm

€ 10/7
Free admission under 18 years, Tuesdays and every first Sunday of the month

Tickets

Guided tours
Tue 5 pm
Sun 2 pm
€ 5 plus exhibition ticket

Tickets for Guided tours

Curator's tours with Anke Hervol
Sun 10 Nov, 24 Nov at 2 pm

Tour for blind and visually impaired visitors (together with ABSV)
Tue 5 Nov 5 pm
Free admission

Tours for deaf visitors with translation into German sign language
Sun 10 Nov 2 pm
Free admission

Special tours for groups, guided tours and workshops for school classes
Information and registration: kunstwelten@adk.de

Further information

Exhibition flyer (PDF, in German)