Bastian Hoffmann: Radical Negation

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Guided by Dadaist, kinetic and conceptual formal language, the work of Colognebased 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. Each of his works pulls away from fixed expectations and instead replaces them with (sometimes playful and humorous) moments resulting from artistic inspiration. Bastian Hoffmann not only scrutinises the general materiality of the objects he uses. Rather he shows that this materiality, as well as a supposedly normal contextualisation of the objects, is constructed through handling and treatment. Or with his words: As an artist, I utilise the freedom to ignore the so-called 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.« For example, he is currently grinding a Porsche Cayenne into pigment by hand and with the simplest of means to create a brushable colour that forms the basis for large-scale paintings.