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THE SPACE BETWEEN

Winner of  the International Photography Awards, PX3 Prix de la Photographie Paris Awards and the Tokyo International Photography Awards The Space Between employs Holfeld's distinctive visual language to assemble the architectural surfaces he encounters as painterly abstractions. Through his lens and borrowing from the clean, vivid clarity of modernist painting, Holfeld transforms his studies into striking compositions of colour and geometric form. 

 

For this series Holfeld has focused on the Calpe housing estate La Muralla Roja by iconic Spanish architect Ricardo Bofill. Built in 1973 La Muralla Roja is a postmodern apartment complex in Manzanera, Calpe, Spain and is ranked as one of Ricardo's ten most iconic works. 

  

In terms of photography Holfeld pushes his artistic practice into new territory, to convey a sense of calmness and poetic lyricism. Harnessing the flexible veracity of the photographic medium, Holfeld’s close-crop photos show careful attention to the geometric fragments of his surroundings revealed in subtle line and unexpected shadows. This play on light cuts across pastel walled surfaces and divides soft sky from gritty stucco, plastic and concrete. 

Working in La Muralla Roja Holfeld was in pursuit of an ‘emotional architecture.’ A belief shared by some of the worlds leading architects that emotion is a language the brain speaks. It is nonverbal, sensory and fundamental to our interpretation of reality. It is the language of memory, imagery and meaning. We cannot discuss the meaning of our surroundings without discussing emotion. 

 

With this in mind, Holfeld went in search of spaces, which were spiritually uplifting, a feeling that could transcend structure. The sensory stimulation Holfeld felt while working in the quiet spaces of La Muralla Roja had a positive impact on him; sending him on a semiotic journey of colour, light, texture and geometry. The resulting images are a reflection of the kinetic aspects of emotions that express themselves within his body as he enters in to dialogue with the structure through his lens. It is this raw material of human consciousness and experience, which Holfeld shares in his images. 

 

The series has received international recognition winning many awards around the world and was exhibited in Dublin's RIAI and London’s RIBA where first editions of Blue and Pink Ascension were acquired by the Institute in to their permanent and prestigious Robert Elwall Photography Archive. 

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