Olaf Holzapfel

Olaf Holzapfel's work (born 1969 in Görlitz, lives and works in Berlin) proves the indissoluble connection between human settlement, technique, and abstraction. Elementary space-generating methods like plaiting, weaving, and latticing—age-old settler techniques—stem from natural linear entities. These techniques are exceptional in that they don't differentiate between technique or machine, or whether a structure is purely functional, for living, or auxiliary. Holzapfel scrutinizes the perception and presence of material within space and whether an image discourse can exist without these physical modules. For him the landscape, and the material it contains, is more than a symbol that fixes identity; rather, it becomes a transmitter.