November 12 – January 2, 2009
For his latest exhibition in the Project Space at Freight + Volume, Peter Allen Hoffmann presents five new small-scale oil paintings. Though conceptually diverse, each painting shares a common interest in creating a dialogue with the history of art. Hoffmann explores representation and abstraction, the distant as well as the recent past, and American and international art histories. As a collection, they draw attention to some of the most significant rifts in art history: Courbet and French Modernism and Duchamp in America. In gaining inspiration from such historically important works, Hoffmann implies not only homage, but also creates a new conversation about art and its place in time and culture.
While the imagery in the paintings is varied, their scale and technique are consistent. Through an extensive process of layering and editing, remnants of previous paintings are often still visible on the surface, informing the final image. The modest size of the works, about one square foot, is intended to relate to the scale of the human head. The relationship between the viewer and these paintings thus recalls that between two faces, which creates an intimate understanding between the viewer and the painting.
Zwischenzug and Untitled (Board) reference the oft-celebrated Modernist grid with their flat, minimalist abstraction; The Origin of the World, a fresh take on both Courbet’s 1866 masterpiece and Duchamp’s Etant Donnes, simultaneously etherealizes the female form through abstraction, while grounding it in a more contemporary art historical canon; in The Source and From Kelly’s Trees, Hoffmann alludes to the legacy of landscape painting.
Peter Allen Hoffmann lives and works in New York. He completed his MFA from Hunter College, New York. His work has also been featured in group and solo exhibitions in New York, Chicago, Philadelphia and Berlin.
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