October 24, 2011 (Calgary, Alberta) – The Alberta College of Art + Design is pleased to announce the opening of a new touring exhibition at the Illingworth Kerr Gallery on Thursday, October 27, 2011. Join us for the presentation of Scenes From The House Dream by David Hoffos, on view at the Illingworth Kerr Gallery from October 27th to December 17 2011. For the first time in Calgary visitors will have the opportunity to experience the entire Scenes from the House Dream work in the Illingworth Kerr Gallery space at the Alberta College of Art + Design. The exhibition will also include a previously unseen addition to the House Dream series Widow Lake (2006).
Scenes from the House Dream formed the nexus of David Hoffos’ studio practice for five years between 2003 and 2008, and serves as a compendium of the artist’s signature new and old media techniques, which have been perfected over seventeen years of art production.
David Hoffos: Scenes from the House Dream
October 27 - December 17, 2011
Illingworth Kerr Gallery | ACAD
Reception | October 27, 2011 | 6:00 - 10:00 PM
Hoffos’ ongoing practice explores the uncanny and its relationship to the everyday; he creates narratives that transcend time and place. The artist’s use of low-tech paraphernalia to produce illusions of reality has contributed to an entirely original body of work. The subject matter of this recent masterwork represents a move away from the outward-looking spectacle to a more personal examination of the human psyche.
As Illingworth Kerr Gallery Director and Curator Wayne Baerwaldt explains, “the significance of David Hoffos’ media and installation work cannot be overstated. ‘Scenes from the House Dream’ represents a zone of resistance to mainstream film and television experience, highlighting transitional bridges between past technologies with the yet to be articulated possibilities for moving image and sound installations. We are at once aware of the determining condition of rectangular screen media that mediates all visual experience today and challenged as viewers to think again about how we can all be creative producers of media culture.”
In Scenes from the House Dream, as with all previous work, Hoffos forms a pact with the viewer; he asks us to suspend disbelief and enter his world. What we find there may both disturb and delight.
“The series is a meandering journey. The experiment was to see if I could take an idea and live with it for five years and to see what comes from that. The process is a bit of a leap, but it has also been a way of developing techniques that were fairly crude in my work in the ‘90s. Now I feel these ideas are getting dialed in. I have always thought that artists should give themselves a sort of second childhood; when they go to art school and think maybe that making art is what they want to pursue, they’re being born. As they learn, they develop technique and craft, they start to enter an adolescence. In my work, I feel like I’ve just come out of my adolescence. Maybe the works I’m doing now are the first adult things that I’ve done” explained the artist in an interview with Glen Lowry.
David Hoffos: Scenes from the House Dream is a touring exhibition organized by the Rodman Hall ArtCentre (RHAC) at Brock University in St. Catharines, in partnership with the Southern Alberta Art Gallery, Lethbridge and TrépanierBaer Gallery, Calgary. It is curated by Shirley Madill, former director of RHAC. The Illingworth Kerr Gallery at the Alberta College of Art + Design in Calgary will be the tour’s final stop.
Timed tickets to visit the exhibition during the opening reception will be available at the ACAD cashier beginning Tuesday October 25. On opening night these tickets will be distributed by a gallery attendant. Please pick up a ticket in order to avoid having to wait in line.
ACAD is a leading centre for education and research, and a catalyst for creative inquiry and cultural development. We engage the world and create possibilities.
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For more information or to arrange an interview:
AnneMarie Dorland
Director of Communications
t. 403.284.7656
c. 403.472.2322
e. AnneMarie.Dorland@acad.ca