Kunsthalle Karlsruhe VIII
Candida Höfer German
Not on view
For more than three decades, Höfer has photographed the empty spaces inside public buildings—from lecture halls, libraries, and museums to lobbies and waiting rooms—to limn what has been described as a “psychology of social architecture.” This photograph shows the semi-public space of a museum "study room," where scholars and researchers are invited by appointment to examine works of art that are not on view. Höfer's deceptively simple photograph is like a hide-and-seek of surrogates, copies, and empty easels, lit both naturally in the curtained windows and artificially via standing lamps that look like highway lighting. Photographed over the entirety of her career, these in-between museum spaces are an important part of the artist's chosen subject, self-referentially evoking the place where material objects from the past encounter the concerns of the present.
