Candida Höfer: Sentiments on Steps and Other Memories

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Matthew Liu Fine Arts is honored to present the latest solo exhibition "Sentiments on Steps and Other Memories" by German photographer Candida Höfer. This exhibition explores the profound relationship between architectural spaces and human emotions, showcasing her outstanding achievements in contemporary photography. Through masterful technique, Höfer captures public spaces devoid of human presence, revealing how buildings, in the absence of people, still convey silent poems of history, culture, and memory. Through her lens, architecture becomes a medium for exploring human existence, the flow of time, and emotional narratives.

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Since the early 1970s, Höfer's artistic exploration has resembled an archaeological study of modern spaces. She studied under renowned photographers Bernd and Hilla Becher, inheriting the Düsseldorf School's tradition of rigorous restraint while forging her own path. Höfer's unique approach reaches new heights in this exhibition—she creates breathtaking visual domains through precise composition and light control, demonstrating how staircases, corridors, and entryways guide the eye through layers of space, creating a visual depth of "spaces beyond spaces." In this multi-layered narrative, architecture becomes a text that can be read and understood as a metaphor for human civilization. Unlike her contemporaries, Höfer focuses on the poetics of space, exploring collective memories sedimented by time through uninhabited public spaces. She once reflected: "The absence of people allows their traces and the influence of these spaces to emerge more clearly—much like how an absent friend often becomes the subject of our most revealing conversations."

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This exhibition brings together Höfer's recent photographic works, unfolding a visual meditation on existence and absence. The title draws inspiration from Li Bai's poem "Lament of the Jade Stairs," specifically the imagery of "Jade stairs bearing white dew, seeping into silken socks as night lingers." Just as the condensed dew in the poem carries thoughts of separation, Höfer's lens captures staircases and hallways stained by time, where absent figures paradoxically suggest human presence. This "presence in absence" creates the emotional distance in Höfer's work—viewers can almost hear footsteps echoing on empty stairs, feeling the lingering warmth of moments past. The exhibited works include Komische Oper Berlin staircase, the Van Abbemuseum Eindhoven's corridors, and Mexico City's Edificio Basurto spiral staircase. Under Höfer's lens, these spaces attain philosophical depth—each step becomes a measure of time, each interplay of light and shadow a trace of history. With precise perspective and technical control, she transforms functional spaces into realms of transcendent quietude. When natural light streams through windows onto wooden banisters, when perspectives vanish into distant points, we sense the breathing of space itself. Höfer's works capture both physical spaces and the intangible—traces of human activity and memories hovering in space. Like the woman waiting under moonlight in Li Bai's poem, Höfer's spatial portraits contain profound contemplation, leading viewers into a realm both familiar and strange, at the intersection of light and shadow.

 

Höfer's artistic achievements are highly acclaimed not only in her native Germany but also on the international stage. In recent years, her work has been featured in solo exhibitions at important institutions including the Academy of Arts in Berlin, Macao Museum of Art, Kunstmuseum Liechtenstein, North Carolina Museum of Art, and the Multimedia Art Museum in Moscow. In 2003, Höfer represented Germany at the Venice Biennale. In 2018, the Sony World Photography Awards recognized her outstanding contribution to photography. In 2024, she was awarded the Käthe Kollwitz Prize by the Berlin Academy of Arts. Her works are in the permanent collections of numerous internationally renowned institutions, including the Museum of Modern Art in New York, Centre Pompidou in Paris, Museum Ludwig in Cologne, and the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía in Madrid. These exhibitions and collections not only testify to Höfer's exceptional achievements as an artist but also highlight her important position in the field of modern and contemporary photographic art.