Ornis Althuis is proud to present the second solo exhibition of young German painter Julius Hofmann (1983) in his gallery. ‘Stony Fields’ includes a selection of paintings and drawings and a new video that together seduce the spectator into a theatrical world full of mysterious figures. Hofmann works and lives in Leipzig, a city that breathes the rich tradition of the art of painting. He graduated at the Academy of Visual Arts in Leipzig two years ago, where he studied as a pupil of well-known artists from the Neue Leipziger Schule Neo Rauch and Heribert C. Ottersbach.
Hofmann masters the craft to create suspense in a single outline. While it remains uncertain if we are looking at a human, a fantasy creature or some kind of animal, the painted figures immediately become characters, referring to a larger story and to a moment before or after the one painted. By this Hofmann challenges the imagination of the spectator by consciously revealing and covering elements in his works. This is the case in ‘Sphere’ (2013), where Hofmann ridiculizes traditional iconography by painting a monk and a young woman is a questionable composition. As the details remain unclear, the gloomy atmosphere forebodes little good.
Hofmann celebrates the aesthetics of Romanticism, in addition he includes specific elements of contemporary society and pop culture in most of his works. The video ‘LAPD’ (2012), for instance, resembles the aesthetic of a videogame. In a 4-minute compilation we follow a violent persecution of a monstrous figure that tries to escape from the police. Similar to the paintings and drawings of Hofmann, two and three-dimensional elements blend together into an obscure scene, stylistically situated where dark romance and gothic pop art meet.
The work of Julius Hofmann studied at the Hochschule für Graphik und Buchkunst in Leipzig with Neo Rauch and Heribert C. Ottersbach. His work is in a number of collections such as TheMuseum of Visual Art Liepzig, Olbricht Collection Berlin and Art Collection of Sparkasse Leipzig.