ART CITIES:Geneva-Olaf Holzapfel

Olaf Holzapfel is particularly interested in how history, culture and architecture intersect and interact, and how these interactions can be examined and reinterpreted through art. His work is often characterised by repetitive patterns and organic forms, which are inspired by both nature and human constructions.

By Dimitris Lempesis
Photo: Xippas Gallery Archive

In contemporary art’s ongoing debate over the digital and the physical, Olaf Holzapfel offers a nuanced alternative to binary thinking. His exhibition “Une réalité insolite” presents an extended inquiry into how images generate space and how physical materials dictate form. Bringing together paintings and intricate straw compositions, the exhibition highlights a multi-decade practice centered on the fundamental relationship between line, structure, and human perception. In traditional drawing, a line is an abstract mark applied to a surface, but for Holzapfel, the line is an active structural component found within the physical properties of a material. In his straw works, each individual stalk acts simultaneously as a raw physical material and a graphic line. Its natural length, tensile resistance, and structural irregularities directly govern the spatial composition. Assembled into precise arrangements, these surfaces alternate between flat geometric abstractions and deep architectural planes, producing space through their own material construction rather than portraying an illusion located elsewhere. Holzapfel’s engagement with organic materials is closely tied to his long-standing interest in digital spaces and the ways virtual environments alter human perception. Instead of treating digital design and natural matter as opposing forces, he approaches both as systems for organizing space. The depths, volumes, and structural thresholds that define his paintings extend directly into his works made from plant fibers, demonstrating that virtual logic and traditional craft exist along the same continuum.

Straw carries an inherent measure of time and labor, originating in cycles of organic growth before undergoing transformation through harvesting and human handiwork. Holzapfel avoids romanticizing straw as a symbol of untouched nature, focusing instead on the technical heritage used to process natural resources and examining how nature and culture shape one another. In the newer works created for the exhibition, this exploration expands through structural motifs like the fold, the loop, and the ribbon. Here, the line folds back upon itself to turn a flat surface into a spatial volume, evoking older textile traditions and ornamental lineage like Sigmar Polke’s 1986 “Dürer Loops”. Rather than serving as direct quotations, these motifs demonstrate how artistic forms circulate across different eras, techniques, and media. Wood, straw, reed, paint, and digital imagery operate not as separate domains, but as interconnected modes of experiencing a single reality. Through continuous shifts between interior and exterior, human construction and organic growth, “Une réalité insolite” reveals the material, technical, and cultural structures that organize our daily experience of space.

Photo: Olaf Holzapfel, Fin de siècle , 2026, Rye straw on wood and India,  ink 115 x 95 cm, © Olaf Holzapfel, Courtesy the artist and Xippas Gallery

Info: Xippas Gallery, Rue des Sablons 6, Geneva, Switzerland, Duration: 18/9-31/10/2026, Days & Hours: Tue-Fri 10:00-13:00 & 14:00-18:30, Sat 12:00-17:00, www.xippas.com/