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15/5/2009

Candida Hofer

Museum Morsbroich, Leverkusen

A comprehensive survey

Curators: Markus Heinzelmann and Doreen Mende

Projects: Done is showing works from fourteen projects by Candida Höfer completed between 1968 and 2008. Photographer Candida Höfer, the architects Kuehn Malvezzi, who developed the displays in close cooperation with Candida Höfer, and the curators of Projects: Done have placed the interplay between photography, architecture and presentation in the centre of their common project.

Here a "project" is seen as a form of work that either runs for a previously planned period of time and/or is completed – 'done' – once a goal defined in its theme has been achieved. So the works chosen to be shown are distinct from work that is better described as regular artistic activity.

This difference is not necessarily discernible in the project themes. Certainly some of them form a contrast with Candida Höfer's usual subject matter at a first glance, the works relating to Flipper, for example – dating from Höfer's early working years –, intended as an illustration project, or the Liverpool complex, with its numerous street images. But these works too are not unrelated to Candida Höfer's central theme of creating images of space, of its different content, its use, what a space shows and how it shows it. The distinction lies more in the limitations set by each project, and in the allocating the images to each particular project. So the exhibition is also an invitation to investigate the projects through the lens of this kind of inner order.

The fifteenth project is the presentation of the exhibition itself, which Höfer has developed jointly with Kuehn Malvezzi. This project is based on co-operation between the artist and the architects that started in 2002, when Kuehn Malvezzi converted the spaces in the Binding Brewery for Documenta 11, at which Candida Höfer showed the Bürger von Calais (Burghers of Calais). Addressing exhibiting as a project ironically revokes the division into projects and regular work that has just been stressed: projects – it becomes clear – are 'done' only when they are exhibited, and every exhibition drawn from an artist's regular work is for its part ultimately a project with a prescribed time limit and a theme – in this case: the project for showing spaces as images, and at the same time showing how spaces show images. (Herbert Burkert)

Candida Höfer
studied at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf, first film with Ole John, then photography with Bernd Becher. Her work has been shown in museums such as the Kunsthalle Basel, the Kunsthalle Bern, the Portikus in Frankfurt am Main, and the Hamburg Kunsthalle. The artist has participated in group shows at the Museum of Modern Art, New York; the Power Plant, Toronto; the Kunsthaus Bregenz; and the Museum Ludwig, Cologne. In 2002 Candida Höfer participated in Documenta 11, and in 2003 she represented Germany at the Venice Biennale (together with the late Martin Kippenberger). The artist lives in Cologne.

Catalog
In German and English, Verlag der Buchhandlung Walther König, 240 pp.; with contributions by Estelle Blaschke, Michael Hagner, Markus Heinzelmann, Doreen Mende, Michael Oppitz, Birgit Pelzer, Julia Voss, Thomas Weski and a discussion between Wilfried Kuehn and Chris Dercon as well as a discussion between Herbert Burkert and Candida Höfer.

Image: Türken in Deutschland 1979 © 2009 VG BILD-KUNST, Bonn

Kindly supported by
Kunststiftung NRW
Sparkasse Leverkusen

Press Contact:
Fritz Emslander, phone: ++49 (0)2 14 /85 556-12, fax: ++49 (0)2 14 /85 556-44, e-mail: fritz.emslander@museum-morsbroich.de

Museum Morsbroich
Gustav-Heinemann-Str. 80
D-51377 Leverkusen
Germany
Opening Hours
Tuesday 11 AM–9 PM, Wednesday–Sunday 11 AM–5 PM

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