CV | Cathrin Hoffmann

Cathrin Hoffmann

(b. 1984, Germany) lives and works in Hamburg, Germany.

In her work, Hoffmann reimagines the body to explore and question what it means to be human in the post-digital age. The anthropomorphic figures that dominate her paintings appear like contortionists, twisted and strained they grapple with the cornerstones of our earthly existence - life and death, pain and pleasure, love and loss, and isolation and connection. In Hoffmann's words: "I create a new virtual body, with its weaknesses and idiosyncrasies, to probe what our present time with modern technology, digitization, and hyper capitalism has made us become?

How do we exist and behave? What is human, what remains?"

Hoffmann's deeply personal visions are realised through a paradoxical engagement with and rejection of digital painting. She begins by mapping out a composition digitally using a graphic tablet, before exchanging the seamless result for an analogue translation where the physical traces of the artist are present. Says Hoffmann, "I am attracted by the ambivalence between perfection and imperfection. My digital work is bright polished and perfect, as soon as I try to reproduce this, I realise it is impossible. It is this area in between that interests me, the perfectly imperfect."

Joining an intimate process of self-reflection with a collective anxiety about the present moment, Hoffmann visualises and critiques our odourless existence within an increasingly online world - a virtual environment which impacts the way we see and are seen, or not seen at all.

(Text by Harry Dougall)

2020

EIN MUSEUM AUF PROBE, Villa Merkel, Esslingen, DE
IT STILL SMELLS OF NOTHING, Public Gallery, London, GB

TRANSATLANTICO, Mana Contemporary, New Jersey, USA

LAYERS AND TRACKS, Ron Mandos Gallery, Amsterdam, NL
EVERYDAY IS SUNDAY, UTA Artist Space, online exhibition
Enter Art Fair, The Hole NYC, Copenhagen, DK

SOMEWHERE IN BETWEEN, Duve Berlin, Berlin, DE

DECADE, Marian Cramer Projects, Amsterdam, NL

SECOND SMILE, The Hole NYC, New York City, USA

Art Rotterdam Fair, Marian Cramer Projects, Rotterdam, NL

Forthcoming:
tba

Exhibitions

2019

JUXTAPOZ AT 25: IN BLACK AND WHITE, The Hotel of South Beach, ArtBasel Miami, USA

TOO MANY I IN DIGITAL, Marian Cramer Projects, Amsterdam, NL

Art Berlin Fair, Setareh Gallery, Berlin, DE

VIRGULA DIVINA, Setareh Gallery, Düsseldorf, DE

End of Residency Show, PLOP, London, GB