David Hoffos turns simple tricks into great art
It takes a moment or two to acclimatize your eyes to the dark cacophonous gallery housing 21 works by David Hoffos most of which are accompanied by a suggestive audio component. Once your eyes have adjusted you find a window in the wall and peer through at a meticulous miniature world — probably some tidy not quite unfamiliar domestic scene.
And then the magic happens. Glowing projections (usually of people) appear and move through the scenes. They aren’t exactly performing a story but exploring the segment of time that you happen to be spying on. You might hear a little girl giggle or a ship lolling in the waves and for a couple moments you’re lost in the world behind the window.
Or maybe passing through the gallery you give a fellow viewer a wide berth — realizing only later that they were a devilishly effective projection.
But Hoffos doesn’t claim to be a magician and uses relatively simple illusion techniques for the sake of art not for trickery.
“I’m not among the circle of magicians that refuse to share their secrets” he says saying that he’s more interested in “talking about the illusion or the nature of reality.”
The tools of the art are purposely left out in the open such as the monitors that provide the ghostly reflections you see in each scene. This approach allows the viewer to figure out for themselves the mechanics behind the artwork.
“It puts the viewer in the position of power and allows them to have some authority on the work” he adds. This particular series of work called Scenes from the House Dream and created over the course of five years is based on a recurring dream about a house that Hoffos has had since childhood. Appropriately you’ll find a domestic touch in all of these works; many of them depict the interior of rooms from cozy fire-lit parlours to an after-hours gallery. Hoffos points out that even those pieces that do not seem directly related to the idea of a house still have some glimpse of a lighted room or enclosed space.
Hoffos describes the house as an “obvious metaphor for the self” and the challenge lies in transforming the symbolic layers into a physical piece of art. While he says that he doesn’t have any favourites among the House Dream works he comments on a few that closely express an actual dream he has had. One of these is called Winter Kitchen an eerie depiction of a lifeless kitchen with a refrigerator door left ajar and snow blowing in past billowing curtains.
“The absence of a human presence evokes a sense of melancholy and loss” he says. “It really reaches me it’s so true to the original dream.”
But like any good artist he acknowledges that the exhibit will affect everyone differently saying that the work is “an attempt to reach out to that lonely daydreamer in the crowd.” With work as rich and enchanting as this though you don’t have to be daydreamer to fall in love with it.
