OLAF HOLZAPFEL
In the Monastery Church from 4.5.2018 to 4.11.2018

Can you make art out of hay? You can if your name is Olaf Holzapfel and you have access to Polish farmers who weave it into veritable ropes. In Poland these are for a spring ritual, whereas the artist, born in Dresden in 1967, weaves them into “images” that look more like sculptures and have the same weight. Especially when their inventor hangs them demonstratively in space in his simple wooden constructions, which clearly exhibit the carpenter’s craft. And so the Monastery Church becomes the site of an encounter between tradition and an innovation that, with much potential, extends into the realm of the speculative, into a “geometry of material” – natural bundles of information evident in these “straw images”. Today the artist works in Berlin, but he links a genuine experience of nature with studies of indigenous cultures ranging from Lusatia to Patagonia. The resulting designs are for “transitional spaces” beyond familiar borders. As was the case at last year’s “documenta 14”, his artistic concept later extends out into the landscape: in Schönthal in the form of a wooden fence complete with gate and bridge that will spur on agriculture and the multifaceted projects to an exemplary landscape-aesthetic.

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