Oran Hoffmann à Aix Written by Patrick Healy F.I.U. Amsterdam | 2018 Oran Hoffmann à Aix Written by Patrick Healy F.I.U. Amsterdam | 2018 1 Thanks to the three different exhibitions In that undertaking he has gone of Oran Hoffmann (born 1981) taking beyond indexing and archiving to show place in Aix in September of this year how constructive and deconstructive (2018), one at the Atelier Cezanne, seeing, his own decade-long research another at Fondation Vasarely, and on perception and responding to one at La Non-Maison, one can say art practise itself, has lead, as will that every surprise at any, or each one, be shown, to an expansive and an of the exhibitions confirms what has emancipatory achievement. Not unlike become increasingly apparent in the his last major museum exhibition in trajectory of Hoffmann’s development Tel Aviv, Hoffmann responds to, enters as an artist since graduating from into visual dialogue with specific the Rietveld Academy in Amsterdam, works, in that case of the artist Josef and his later studies at the Bezalel Albers, and wrests from these his own Academy in Jerusalem, in the Master independent fashioning and highly of Fine Arts programme, where he individual and recognisable style. In this graduated summa cum laude. case in Aix, he continues and refines that first great dialogue and now with In these three shows his increasing the work of Vasarely and Cezanne, preoccupations and achievements as and a single manifestation at La Non- an artist become more legible. It is Maison, often described as a micro- a work involved with the signature of centre for cultural experimentation. things as much as persons. There is much subtle thinking, and ingenious transformations, which has been a feature of his personal development since his graduation days. The detailed research and response he makes are a result of careful preparation, and the current shows have involved him in working and living in Aix for the best part of a year. As we will see, he has literally spent hundreds of hours working through material in the Fondation Vasarely, living on site to progress his ideas further. 2 The exhibition in Tel Aviv was a The title of the show, Objektiv, points mature statement, if you like, or the to an outstanding paradox, namely way-station at which Hoffmann had that the very lens which adds to the arrived. It was labelled as a ‘two- claim of photography as rendering the person’ show and given the title objective world, points to the reality Objektiv. The remarkable fact of the of the subjective, and the point of exhibition was how Hoffmann would view. In literature the phenomenon literally engage in a de-structuring of intertextuality is well documented, and response that was constructive and in art-historical study much of the and developed a kind of constitutive tracking of sources and influences can seeing where with the deceased be seen as a recognition of the ‘inter- artist Josef Albers he forms a living iconic’, which for some challenges partnership and dynamic exchange. the view of creation as necessarily original, and for others indicates the By a process of selection and shifting ancestral claims that can free and of observation viewpoints, a playful empower creative, artistic work. So, and inventive group of works emerged. too, in Aix Hoffmann continues with One can speak of inter-iconic exchange. his working through and responding This inter-iconicity pointed to a to earlier artistic work, seizes the community of concern, as much as conjunction of Cezanne/Vasarely, and any issue of facts. There is a hazard in in a third show at La Non-Maison. such an undertaking, as the past can literally overwhelm those who do not approach it with great respect. For Hoffmann the artist is still alive and available for dialogue in his works. Objektiv: Wood Print Linoleum, Plexiglass (Yellow and Blue), C-print, 80 x 64 cm, 2014 Blocknote, C-print, 70 x 56 cm, 2014 7 It is necessary to review Hoffmann’s Given the range of his, it would be earlier sojourn. Although born in Israel, best to say, topics, and his fascination Hoffmann spent most of his formative with imaging already existing images years in Holland, and had made his from book illustrations, film posters, the choice to study photography at the fascination also with the way of looking: prestigious Rietveld Academy. the set-up of the image and awareness During his undergraduate years his work of its destination and so forth, his was already noted for the combination work was seen to epitomise strong of technical precision and the unusual currents which were emerging from choice of subject matter, which in one the Academy at that time (between compelling set of images consisted 2000-2006), and both he and his of photographs from illustrations of contemporaries were critically treated a bison and a hare published in an in the Dutch context as ‘conceptualists’. old book of ‘natural history’. With the graduation exhibition, one sees the The complex tensions between various interests he had developed, and landscape, nature and objects are held the strong relation to the problem of together through works that insist on the artefact, to the process of making. their own artefactual existence; the examples are Three Trees, Fabeln, and Hoffmann had travelled to Israel in Habseligkeiten, with its precise interest the same year as completing his in ornament, repetition and optical preparations, 2006, mostly visiting illusion. Rather than thinking of the archaeological sites, both ancient and artist as moving from one set of topics modern, covering the whole land from or thematic to another, thus marking North to South, taking photographs of some idea of ‘progress’, it is better Beit She’an in the north and Caesarea to see how the various tendencies in the South, including the Nabatean already shown in his early work gain site of the remains of Avdot on the traction and become more intensely old Petra-Gaza road – a site that was focused as his range of experience heavily vandalised three years later. and life lived goes on. In one sense there is a line forward in terms of lived directionality, and yet in another there are circles of repetition that turn and turn about like an expanding spiral. Habseligkeiten, C-print, 80 x 64 cm, 2006 8 But no amount of intellectual rigour He also understood that photography can keep the image made from its abandons an image to its own fate, own object status, its life literally, as and restores the objective as intensely a thing in the very Nachleben of contingent. In whatever way illusions reception, and every reception of an are orchestrated, the photographic image had to leave open the openness object must endure its existence it engendered. In a very frank avowal as surface, and as carrier of the of intention and also of freedom visible, which can include darkness from a single label, for example and light. The image of the hare ‘conceptual artist’, Hoffmann created and bison were both in black and both ambivalence and persistent white. In one of the tendencies his ambiguity in his work. He did not view commitment to the story, or fabel, can himself as anything or anyone other be seen. There are inevitable symbolic than a working artist who engaged resonances; one could, for example, with the medium of the photographic point to two explicit examples of and not only as an end in itself. artists working in the Netherlands at the time of his graduation, namely The choice of a new photographic Joseph Semah and Hilarius Hofstede. image, the creation of another object, of something already made, a photograph of a photograph, points Fabeln; Bison, black and white pigment print, 120 x 90 cm, 2006 on one hand to an acknowledgement of his art inspired by traditions, and on the other to a double gesture towards his position with regard to image making. He accepted ‘ready- made’ work, and indicated in that choice his awareness of the complex interplay between the enabling object and the simulations and illusions the play of subject and object involved. 10 The image pair also pointed to a subtle Hoffmann was a student who iconographical source, which in the acknowledged the work of his case of the hare was directly taken up teachers, and especially that of by the artist Joseph Semah, who has Johannes Schwartz, part of whose in his work explored the relationship teaching emerged directly from his of the hare and persecution in the own practise and was concerned with Diaspora. The bison was deployed as unusual aspects of the neglected a powerful image in the major project everyday, and the high-end cultural initiated by the Dutch artist Hilarius locations such as museums as a setting Hofstede, under the title The Bison for art and the viewing of art; his Caravan, which has resulted in major projects ranging from shepherds huts, group shows on this single theme in garden sheds to viewing Vermeer at Marseille, Mali, Brazil and Amsterdam. the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam. One Hoffmann contributed to the show could certainly speak of a search with his poetic and memorable for ‘profane illumination’, as defined image, during the Tierrafino hosting by Walter Benjamin in his essay of the caravan in Amsterdam (2014). on Surrealism. The strong optical obsession within the Dutch tradition was often engaged in releasing a beauty from the banal, of bringing light out of darkness. The highly wrought consideration of process and the history of photography exhibited a strong paradox, that of purity and a kind of innocence in the creation of the new object, itself not a reference to something total, but another fragment another salvaging of appearance.