Rena Bransten Gallery is pleased to announce Spaces and Places, a solo exhibition by German photographer Candida Höfer. Best known for her large-scale color photographs of grand interior spaces and libraries, this exhibition engages Höfer’s signature images in a new way by pairing them with smaller, often abstracted works focused on individual details and arrangements suggestive of mise en scènes. The juxtaposition of the large to the small, the grand to the prosaic, invites the viewer to explore Höfer’s practice and consider the expansive interiors as a collection of small moments and event remnants.

As is typical of Höfer’s recent work, the images in the exhibition are devoid of people, leading Virginia Heckert and Mary-Kay Lombino, curators of Höfer’s largest exhibition in the United States, to title the accompanying monograph Architecture of Absence. Yet both the large and small works are filled with allusions to people – rows of chairs anticipating an audience, and shelves of books awaiting readers. Höfers images are achieved by her intense present-ness as an artist and photographer, by her deliberate consideration of place and all the minute to grand components that define our constructed world.

Born in Eberswalde, Germany, Candida Höfer studied at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf, initially film with Ole John, then photography with Bernd Becher. Her work is shown in museums including the Kunsthalle Basel; the Museum of Modern Art, New York; the Power Plant, Toronto; the Kunsthaus Bregenz, and the Museum Ludwig, Cologne. In 2002 Candida Höfer participated in documenta 11. In 2003 she represented Germany at the Biennale in Venice (together with the late Martin Kippenberger). Candida Höfer lives in Cologne.