Although Hofmann {*93} works mainly in the field of performance, his artistic practice reaches out to various other fields and media: he relates to the artistic milieu as well as the world of fashion, where he is occasionally active as a stylist and model, and he is also busy as a curator.
As an artist who grew up in Prague during the 90s and who is now staging performances across the countries of an increasingly unstable European Union, contingency and informality are reoccurring elements in the narrative of his life. He spends his time moving from place to place, leaving behind drops of lavender oil on the bedsheets he sleeps in. A nature child living within urban surroundings, he uses performance as a means to create archipelagos of increased presence that block out the feelings of desensation and dissociation awaiting outside the gallery door.
Hofmann’s works involve a carefully curated group of actants chosen from his immediate social surroundings. While he does take a leading role during the preparation of the pieces, he blends in with the crowd as soon as the performance starts. Along with his peers, he slides down museum handrails, deforms his face by pressing it against panes of glass and forms a red line between his body and theirs using thread and a sewing needle. At some point, the group stands still in formation as if posing for a fashion editorial, pretty and unbothered faces clad in deconstructed garments.
At a glance, this gasping and drenched clan enact separation issues, fears for the future, feelings of ineptitude and desensitization. However, within what appears anxious and strained, the artist provides a counterbalance effect of amusement and explorative play. These movements analyze the limits of a constructed reality and sense of self in order to reveal or will an alternate in which we have the power to act.