Depth and Surface. Scientific Tableaux in Dialogue with Olaf Holzapfel is on view at The Oktogon Art Gallery of the Dresden University of Fine Arts.
The exhibition proposes a dialogue between the scientific imagery from 40 academic teaching and research collections of the Dresden University of Technology and Dresden University of Fine Arts and the works by Olaf Holzapfel, arranged especially for this project.
These collections include models, teaching boards, display cases, and objects from other genres made or collected over the past two hundred years for specific didactic purposes. The groups of works by Olaf Holzapfel, play on this scientific iconography. The ensemble is conceived as a complementary production which illuminates from several perspectives both the tableau as a form of order and display as well as Holzapfel’s artistic reference to it. In this way, significant interconnections between artistic and scientific object cultures from the 19th century to the present day are made visible. Next to sculptures, paintings, works made from natural materials,such as the Hay Pictures, and models from the past 20 years, Holzapfel also shows a new framework construction. Its encounter with historical ‘object-tableaux’ opens up new perspectives on the ‘space in-between’—a concept which, to Holzapfel’s mind, connects the present-day living spaces with time, people, nature, and things.
Image: Exhibition view, Depth and Surface. Scientific Tableaux in Dialogue with Olaf Holzapfel, Oktogon, 2024. Photo: Andreas Kempe.
