Olaf Holzapfel

Up-and-coming artist Olaf Holzapfel creates paintings, photographs, and sculptures that draw from a range of influences—regional craft traditions, unusual materials, and sequential art-making processes, to name a few. Regarding the latter, two of Holzapfel’s most recognizable series involved successive methods of production. To create his “Faltungen” (meaning “foldings”) series, for example, the artist enlisted a team of assistants who aided in the heating of materials like PVC, polycarebonate, or acrylic and later performed specific steps in order to fold the substance into a predetermined design. Likewise, Holzapfel has collaborated with local farmers from the border region between Poland and Germany; their traditionally rendered straw ropes are transported to the artist’s studio where they are precisely incorporated into unique works of art.

Holzapfel was born in Görlitz, Germany in 1969, and he grew up in Dresden. The artist studied at the Dresden Academy of Fine Arts and since then has exhibited his work throughout Germany and Europe. Holzapfel lives and works in Berlin.