Bastian Hoffmann: Radical Negation

How to turn a Porsche into a Painting

Guided by Dadaist, kinetic or conceptual formal language, the work of Cologne-based artist Bastian Hoffmann (*1983) plays an ambivalent game with the everyday: Walls that have a dynamic life of their own or puddles whose supposed casualness is subject to stringent planning. The dissolution of familiar everyday contexts of use occupies an omnipresent position in the artist's oeuvre. Each of his works distances itself from fixed expectations and allows an artistic source of inspiration with a sometimes playful and humorous tendency to become present. Bastian Hoffmann not only questions the general materiality of the objects he uses, he also shows that the materiality as well as a supposedly normal contextualisation of objects are constructed through their handling and treatment. Or as the artist says: "I utilise the freedom to ignore the meaningfulness and productivity of an act in the creative process and to avoid compromises. Stones, cars and puddles can thus become objects of analysis and reflection, far removed from any striving for productivity, efficiency and economy. The final works are then products of this experimental search for the unknown possibilities of an object or a thought." And so he is currently crushing a Porsche Cayenne into pigment by hand and with the simplest of means in order to create a paintable colour that will then serve as the basis for large-scale paintings.

Exhibition:
sprengel@feinkunst, Hanover, 13/4 - 23/6/2024