The Künstlerhaus, Halle für Kunst & Medien (KM–) is pleased to continue its programme in 2013 by introducing several solo exhibitions. Presented in the ground-level rooms of the KM– venue is a new installation by Peter Gerwin Hoffmann (born 1945 in Gröbming, lives in Graz). As an early pioneer of media art, Hoffmann continues to work in a social context and in electronic space.
This exhibition is held on the occasion of the 2012 Honorary Prize in the Fine Arts of the Province of Styria, which honours artists for their artistic ouevre based on jury nominations.
In the exhibition ǁ PARALLEL WELTEN (Parallel Worlds), Peter Gerwin Hoffmann likewise explores, through precise experimental arrangements, how realities might be portrayed or reconstructed. Surveying the sacred space of art with 6.3 km of anonymous painting: a small municipal road in the market town of Pöllau (route: Auerkreuz > Auerkreuzweg > Hochstrasse > Pöllaubergstrasse Pöllaubergstrasse > Hochstrasse > Auerkreuzweg > Auerkreuz) is the point of origin for this video piece (2002-2013), shown for the very first time at KM–. Here, landscape views and senses of space reciprocally inform one another and share equal importance with painterly questions, such as: Can landscape painting even function as a media-reflexive “road movie”? The spatial-sensory localisation difficulties triggered in the viewers in the display membrane by the presentation shown in the closed exhibition space, in turn, become tangible here on an individual basis. The exhibition also shows socio-political photographs which offer insight into social customs of the region whose roads were surveyed, as well as a selection of “abstract” still prints of the filmed route.
Moreover, Peter Gerwin Hoffmann has always been known to manifest trenchant social and political interventions.
“the installation is an exploration of art space and real space: aided by a mirroring of real space in art space and of art space in real space. due to the intertwinement of the two spaces, real space becomes art space and art space becomes real space. with this intertwinement of context, the level of consciousness oscillates from art experience to real experience and from real experience to art experience, thus engendering an awareness of perception. there is no such thing as art; there are only informational experiences of different states of perception. art helps me to more easily become immersed in this consciousness experience of information flow, but I don’t rely on it for this. anyone could perceive sensory reality in the context of art. the existing separation of ‘art’ and ‘everyday life’ obscures this fact.” (Peter Gerwin Hoffmann)
Exhibitions (Selection)
Peter Gerwin Hoffmann: Gold für Afrika, Werkstadt Graz, (2011 solo)
WIR SIND BETTLER, Stadtmuseum Graz, (2011)
Peter Gerwin Hoffmann 1960–2006, Neue Galerie am Landesmuseum Joanneum Graz, (2006 solo)
teleskulptur 3, arbeitsgemeinschaft kriesche/hoffmann, Graz, (1993)
WYSIWYG, arbeitsgemeinschaft kriesche/hoffmann, Graz, (1988–89)
humane skulpturen, arbeitsgemeinschaft kriesche/hoffmann, Graz, (1980–81)