PRESS RELEASE
JEANNE HOFFMAN: Borrowed Scenery
Nov 9 – Nov 26, 2022
Everard Read Cape Town is pleased to present: Borrowed Scenery, a solo exhibition of new paintings by Jeanne Hoffman.
Artist statement:
As a creative act, “borrowing scenery” can be described as a framing, a drawing in, of contextual distance – geographical, visual, conceptual.
In Hoffman’s work, fragments of multiple perspectives and memories lend themselves to a collage of many viewpoints, captured – for a moment – by the limits of the canvas and the artist’s particular choices. These material borrowings from disparate realities invade one another’s territory, instigating conversations. From one territory moves the unmitigated, primordial, ineffable; from another, the mediated, rationalised, observed – each drawn towards the other in this space of painting, a fertile space, creative through the multiple encounters and conflicts it stages.
Hoffman’s process begins with collage and continues through painting: fragments collected and recollected through a series of poetic responses and gestures. At times, references are recognisable; at others, illegible, preverbal marks and traces speak of the untamed – of peripheral presences, fugitive fragments hovering in the corner of the eye, burgeoning suggestions on the tip of the tongue.
The borrowing of multiple perspectives at once, where distance cohabits with immediacy, is inherent in the very process of artmaking. Meaning is made in the movement between up-close, personal preoccupation and a stepping back, a wider angle, but it is movement that simultaneously cloaks and clarifies. Resisting traditional binaries of abstraction versus figuration, meaning is intimated in the liminal tension, at the moment just before things become certain.
The to-and-fro continues in the act of exhibiting – of reframing – where space opens up to draw in new anchor points. Between individual pieces; between walls; between artist and viewer; between private and public; individual and communal spaces become charged with relational meaning as yet unarticulated.
Hoffman’s paintings and exhibitions are, thus, intended as devices for contemplation – what Barthes describes as “stages” upon which thoughts roam freely, that permit both artist and viewer to enter into a poetic landscape to engage with what words cannot say, being transformed by the gestures at play, where room is made for recognition, surprise and even refuge.
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Installation images by Mike Hall
Biography:
(b. 1978)
Working across diverse mediums and far-flung geographies, artist Jeanne Hoffman revels in the spaces between things. Paintings, drawings and ceramic objects function as dwelling points – “temporary shelters for thoughts” – as she explores the emotional and socio-cultural dimensions of place. Hoffman states: “There is a direct correlation between travelling across a landscape and the path of a graphic mark that transforms a blank page into an imaginary space.” “Drawing” translates then not only to three- dimensional artistic mediums and physical space, but also to a larger “stage”: Referential forms are assembled in relation with one another, creating movement, dialogue and meaning on the fringes of delineation.
Hoffman has held numerous solo and group exhibitions, both locally and abroad, and has participated in residencies in Belgium, the Netherlands, Finland and South Africa.
EXHIBITIONS
2022
Borrowed scenery, solo exhibition, Everard Read, Cape Town
Open Plot, THK Gallery, Cape Town
A pebble in the mouth, group exhibition, curated by Maja Marx, Turbine Art Fair, Johannesburg
Painter painter!, group exhibition, Barnard Gallery, Cape Town
Spring Awakening, group exhibition, Southern Guild, Cape Town
2021
Dream window, solo exhibition, Salon Ninety One, Cape Town
Falling Awake, group exhibition, The Fourth, Cape Town
2020
Shaping things, SMAC gallery, Stellenbosch
To make a landscape fit in doors, solo exhibition, Salon Ninety One, Cape Town
Investec Cape Town Art Fair, with Salon Ninety One
A hazy shade of winter, group exhibition, Salon Ninety One, Cape Town
2019
Wildflowers, group exhibition, Salon Ninety One, Cape Town
Entropy, group exhibition, Salon Ninety One, Cape Town
Strange stuttering shapes, curated by Liza Grobler for Woordfees, Stellenbosch
2018
Drift, solo, 99 Loop Gallery, Cape Town
Investec Cape Town Art Fair with 99 Loop Gallery
Back to the future III, group exhibition, SMAC gallery, Cape Town
2017
Field, group exhibition,at Salon91 Gallery, Cape Town
Mixed Metaphors, solo exhibition, 99 Loop Gallery, Cape Town
You Leave Me With This, group exhibition, No End, Johannesburg
Out of nowhere, group exhibition, SMITH, Cape Town
Folly, group exhibition, SMITH, Cape Town
2016
Clay/Ground, group exhibition,Cavalli Estate, Stellenbosch
From Whence They Came, group exhibition,SMITH and Kalashnikovv, Cape Town
2015
Thinking Ultramarine, UCT Centre for Curating the Archive
Décor-Z, group exhibition, Spier Wine Estate, Yellowwoods Art, Stellenbosch
2013
Les oeuvres du Frans Masereel centrum at 9th International Biennial Liege, Belgium
2009
Constellations, group exhibition, Stichtung WEP, Groningen, Netherlands
2008
Strange things travel with you, solo exhibition, Whatiftheworld, Cape Town
Collage City/Kollaasikaupunki, group exhibition, Vuojoki, Finland
2007
Room-travel, group exhibition, Whatiftheworld, Cape Town
Common Ground, group exhibition, Lönnstrom Art Museum, Finland
Paper and me, group exhibition, AVA, Cape Town
2006
Long words on a hot afternoon, solo exhibition, blank projects, Cape Town
Choice Assorted and Illustration Nation with Whatiftheworld Gallery, Cape Town
2004
Battersea Art Fair, London
