France by walking
Saint-Etienne to Avignon FRANCE 2017

In France by walking, Olivier Hölzl (*1979) embarks on a search for traces in which he enters into dialogue with the landscape, time, spaces, distances, materials, natural phenomena, and his own body. Equipped with a photo tent for precise snapshots, he penetrates a nomadic experiential space occupied by wind, sounds, tactile, visual, and olfactory qualities on extended tours through France. Like Richard Long, Olivier Hözl pulls his materials from the landscape, almost performatively, exposing himself to the weather. Leaving behind asphalt, level surfaces, and automated transportation to simply spend walking in nature. He made the coinciding decision to slow down and contemplate our existence and the way we constantly push ourselves to extremes and that holds subversive potential. In stop-motion, Hölzl is the protagonist of an art that takes its time, thematizes human uprooting through the culture of progress, and places it in a symbolic, aesthetic, and ontological context. Through a chronological sequence of photographed objects, an archive of eventfulness is created, a typography of the distance traveled along the Rhône River, which the artist makes accessible in illuminated objects and a short film in stop-motion. Esther Mlenek