Review
SCENES FROM THE HOUSE DREAM: PHASE 2
David Hoffos
Runs until May 8.
Trépanier Baer Gallery
(#105, 999 Eighth St. S.W.)
Walking into any dark room is an uncertain proposition, downright creepy even, particularly inside museums and galleries. Convincing a stranger to stay and look at something in such a space, without having a panic attack, can be tricky.
Internationally known and collected artist David Hoffos has packed audiences into dimly-lit alcoves for years, and given them good reason to stick around. In lights-out spaces, Hoffos creates staggering, detailed and ambiguous dioramas. When you enter, take a deep breath, walk with caution and take care not to collide with other visitors. Like those groping through a church basement haunted house, viewers might question what’s real in this twilit cabinet.
People familiar with Hoffos’s past work may not be surprised by the content and execution of Scenes From the House Dream: phase 2, but will nonetheless remain delighted. Those who like to stroll lower Mount Royal and stare idly into apartment windows as they pass will find themselves mesmerized, hooked and outed. Hazy, speculative figures wander through the evocative landscapes and buildings he creates using miniatures, models, televisions, glass and mirrors. Flickering characters, reflected from televisions onto sheets of glass in front of each diorama, inhabit Hoffos’s strange and chilling grottos, cityscapes and forests. Like gawking through a keyhole, every situation is richly textured, minutely detailed, and jammed full with voyeuristic glee.
The standout success of the show, a damp, sunken-cathedral-of-a-wharf docking a ghostly sea craft, sets the tone for the exhibition: foreboding, anxious and soaked in mood.
These open narratives are luscious representations of mundane non-events. A figure saunters out of a trailer, gazing expectantly into the surrounding woods. At an airport hotel, a woman wanders in and out of view as a plane taxis in the distance.
Not as strictly populist as it might seem – after all, people do love watching moving pictures – Scenes manages to take its concept further. There is no specific climax to these dramas. The narrative impulse to "finish the story" is resisted, which adds significant strength to the experience of viewing them. It would be easy (but wildly inaccurate) to consider that nothing happens in these set pieces. They recount the nuances, gaits and postures of a curious and oddly arresting bunch of characters in their natural habitats. Though in truth the subject proper is optical sleight of hand.
Recently nominated for the prestigious Sobey Award, Hoffos certainly is noteworthy. Scenes reasserts the Lethbridge artist’s position in the Canadian contemporary art canon. |
Copyright ©2004 FFWD. All rights reserved.