Olaf Holzapfel

In 2024, the Zurich Art Prize, awarded annually by Museum Haus Konstruktiv and Zurich Insurance Company Ltd, goes to Olaf Holzapfel (b. 1967 in Dresden, lives and works in Berlin and Brandenburg). He is the 17th winner of the renowned award. Endowed with CHF 100,000, the prize consists of an CHF 80,000 budget for the production of a solo exhibition at Museum Haus Konstruktiv and CHF 20,000 in prize money

30.5.–8.9.2024
curated by Sabine Schaschl

In his multi-layered oeuvre, Olaf Holzapfel deals with the conception and materiality of spaces. After the 2000s, during which he particularly focused on megalopolises and their relationship with virtual space, observing a kinship between urban structures’ grids and the internet’s digital grids, his interest increasingly shifted toward the physically material site. Since then, Holzapfel has been searching for ways to artistically dissolve dualities, such as those of city and landscape, interior and exterior, or virtual and real visual spaces, and to describe them as something fluid. The result is a constant exchange between these forces. His work revolves around intercultural exchange with artists and artisans, as well as recourse to vernacular techniques. For example, Holzapfel has been working for more than ten years with weavers from the Wichí community in Argentina’s Gran Chaco and with carpenters from Lower Saxony, who implement his designs using natural and locally typical materials, such as wood, straw or natural fibers.

The projects produced in this way are process-oriented and collectively developed during an ongoing exchange of knowledge between all participants. “Engaging with other cultures,” states Holzapfel, “leads to exhibitions with a variety of media (installation, sculpture, material pictures, film). […] For me, an openness toward related media is a prerequisite for understanding art. Visual discourse is always simultaneously a discourse on media theory, and is negotiated on the basis of experiential knowledge gained from practicing manual work. I find it important to raise awareness of the connections between various space-creating techniques and where they come from.”

The Zurich Art Prize jury was particularly enthusiastic about Olaf Holzapfel’s adept handling of a wide range of very different media and spaces. His works, realized in a multifaceted formal language, raise substantial questions, for instance about production mechanisms or the relationship between culture and nature, without losing any of their poetic lightness. His groups of works, developed over several years, captivate with a continuity that resists the fast pace of our times in an enchanting way.

Holzapfel began to train as an artist at the age of 29 in Dresden. There, he studied painting at the Dresden University of Fine Arts from 1996 to 2001 and was in Ralf Kerbach’s master class from 2001 to 2003. In 2001, he received the Hegenbarth Scholarship and, in the same year, traveled to the National Institute of Design (NID) in Ahmedabad, India, where he spent several months as a research student under Singanapalli Balaram. In 2002, this was followed by an artist-in-residence stay at Columbia University in New York. In 2014, he was awarded the Gerhard Altenbourg Prize.

Holzapfel can look back on numerous international solo and group exhibitions. He had solo shows, for instance, in 2021 at Museo de Arte Contemporáneo in Salta, Argentina, as well as at Bündner Kunstmuseum in Chur, in 2019 at Museo Nacional de Arte Decorativo in Buenos Aires, in 2018 at the Schoenthal Monastery Sculpture Park, and in 2015 at the Mishkan Museum of Art in Ein Harod, Israel. His permanent installations can be seen in public spaces, for example they will return there (2023) at the BUGA site in Mannheim, Harfen (Harps, 2022) at Nassfeldalm in Bad Gastein, Der Geflochtene Garten (The Woven Garden, 2022) at the Museum of European Cultures (MEK) in Dahlem, Berlin, and Arena (2020) in Plot 3 at Kunsthaus Dresden. His works were also shown at documenta 14 in 2017 and at the 54th Biennale di Venezia in 2011.