Andreas Hofer
Born in Munich, 1963
Lives and works in Berlin
Andreas Hofer
The pictorial worlds of Andreas Hofer are poetic, familiar and irritating at the same time: science fiction pairs off with art history, comic book heroes appear side by side with emblems of the Third Reich, dark shapes and light figures share the same canvas. The German artist draws sensitive and subtle scenes that are nevertheless sombre. Upon closer inspection, his colourful and dreamlike imagery threatens to tip over into its opposite—a nightmare. His subject matter is built up into a complex and diverse system of signs that includes traditional images, removed from the popular lexicon, then consciously distorted and expanded.
Almost all of the paintings, drawings and statements that Hofer produced since the end of the 1990s are signed "Andy Hope 1930". This alter ego stands for an interim person between the artist and his work. The name “Hope” radiates optimism, which is in direct contrast to the dark moods of his scenes or the historical landscape suggested by the date. With it, as Susanne Gaensheimer has remarked, Hofer ‘marks them as timeless or also implies the timelessness of his own existence. […] it is the potential of this "new world" that is alluded to in transforming Andreas Hofer’s name into an American Andy Hope.’ (from the catalogue Welt ohne Ende (World without End), p. 11-12)
Born in Munich, 1963
Lives and works in Berlin
Andreas Hofer
The pictorial worlds of Andreas Hofer are poetic, familiar and irritating at the same time: science fiction pairs off with art history, comic book heroes appear side by side with emblems of the Third Reich, dark shapes and light figures share the same canvas. The German artist draws sensitive and subtle scenes that are nevertheless sombre. Upon closer inspection, his colourful and dreamlike imagery threatens to tip over into its opposite—a nightmare. His subject matter is built up into a complex and diverse system of signs that includes traditional images, removed from the popular lexicon, then consciously distorted and expanded.
Almost all of the paintings, drawings and statements that Hofer produced since the end of the 1990s are signed "Andy Hope 1930". This alter ego stands for an interim person between the artist and his work. The name “Hope” radiates optimism, which is in direct contrast to the dark moods of his scenes or the historical landscape suggested by the date. With it, as Susanne Gaensheimer has remarked, Hofer ‘marks them as timeless or also implies the timelessness of his own existence. […] it is the potential of this "new world" that is alluded to in transforming Andreas Hofer’s name into an American Andy Hope.’ (from the catalogue Welt ohne Ende (World without End), p. 11-12)
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