◎Yu Muyun
Exhibition: Florentine Hoffmann: Rejoice!
Exhibition period: 2022.8.6-10.23
Venue: Today Art Museum
Just imagine, if one day, a huge tiger suddenly appeared by your window, and then you will be surprised to find that the world is completely different from what you expected!
That's the beauty of Florentine Hoffmann's work.
The artist who let the giant "Big Yellow Duck" embark on a global tour more than ten years ago brought his huge works to the Today Art Museum this time, including balloon tigers, colored paper figures, and giant birds in hats. , stay next to the animal lying comfortably, and the mood unconsciously relaxes.
"When an item you're used to seeing becomes huge, you notice it and discover the hidden beauty and joy." As Hoffman himself said in an interview, "I will take a lot of Enlarge the object and put it in the public space, not only the big yellow duck. When human beings become very small, your social status and living status are not important, everyone has already converged. I am very concerned about public space, where works can be Competing with architecture and ubiquitous commerce, where people buy this, buy that, spend everywhere, and I want people to get out of it for a while, to appreciate something beautiful, to see things from a different perspective, and to read the hidden meaning of it if you want to. information contained."
Hoffman created "The Big Yellow Duck" with the idea of allowing people to rediscover their own lives and discover the importance of happiness in them.
The prototype of the big yellow duck is a toy duck in the bathtub. It will quack when you squeeze it with your hands. It is also a toy that we often come into contact with when we are young.
Hoffman took this as inspiration and began to think: what would be the effect of magnifying this little yellow duck many times?
Today, when the earth has become a global village, and the traffic and interests are so convenient, going to a city on the other side of the earth is just a matter of getting on a transoceanic plane, but Hoffman turned the little yellow duck into a big yellow duck. , turned the bathtub that the little yellow duck once stayed in into the ocean, so the big yellow duck embarked on a journey to various countries like a star holding a concert tour, slowly wandering along the port with the water waves.
This slowly drifting duck appeared on the shore uncharacteristically, and quickly attracted the attention of the locals. People who "know" art or not were attracted by it and gathered around it.
In the following years, the big yellow duck "drifted" to Hong Kong, Kaohsiung and Amsterdam, bringing surprises and joy to people everywhere, and made this playful artist appear in people's field of vision.
Why did you choose this duck as the prototype for your own artistic creation?
Hoffman mentioned in the interview, "The things that inspire me the most are from everyday life." He believes that when everyday images are commonplace, such as the little yellow duck in the bathtub, the panda in the zoo and the common monkey doll, When magnified many times and huge, it inspires us to discover new sides of life that we have never seen before.
These gigantic animals are somewhere between installation and sculpture.
When they appear in the city, the huge volume is like a visitor from outside the sky, reminding the city residents that their existence cannot be ignored, which is also one of the meanings of public sculpture, attracting people's attention and attention with a huge body that exceeds the daily scale of human beings , to awaken people's cognition, so as to re-understand life and update cognition.
But at the same time, Hoffman has no idea of turning his works into landmark buildings or monumental sculptures. For him, sculptures are works of art that bring shock and surprise to people, rather than requiring people to go to Monument to be worshipped or taken seriously.
As a result, his sculptures can also be touched, interacted with, and even burrowed into to play.
Many works are removed after being in a city for a while, but Hoffman's work is not a steel sculpture in the traditional sense on a pedestal, but more like a sudden and joyful visitor.
"I want to make works that can be touched," Hoffman said. "It's like being awakened, and it encourages people to observe things that they can't see in ordinary life. Art is about getting emotional resonance. , share and discuss empathy with others, resonate with the work and the public space you’re in, embrace uncertainty.” Make large-scale works an amusement park accessible to all, where people can gather around giant animals Being around, having fun, and sharing feelings with each other is what Hoffman does in all of his work.
"Florentine Hoffmann: Gathering!" exhibited at the Today Art Museum is a good place to revive your mood and embrace joy after the epidemic.
Starting from "Birthday Tiger", when we approached this huge tiger, we found that it turned out to be a huge tiger bundled by millions of balloons. The white, orange, yellow and black balloons were like spots. The brightly colored tiger, if you look up, you will see that the tiger is wearing a huge birthday party hat, it turns out that this is a big tiger just celebrating his birthday.
Hoffman's animals all seem to be in a moment in a humorous scene, as vivid as cartoon characters captured in a moment.
Another pleasant sculpture is the "Confetti Man" standing in the exhibition hall. The confetti is a prop used to celebrate at weddings and birthday parties, and it is also a symbol of celebration. Hoffman put the symbol of blessing. The confetti is sticking thickly on this figure with arms raised and cheering: round belly, round head, lovely limbs, this exaggerated cartoon figure has nothing to symbolize its identity, age, nationality and Elements of gender, we only find it to be a happy person.
Its happiness can't even carry it and accumulates under the body through the falling confetti, so why is it so happy?
Perhaps it is just to let go of the shackles of many inherent concepts, open the heart, and joy and pleasure will come naturally.
Hoffman's work has always made us feel intimate, despite their cartoonishly exaggerated imagery, thanks to their everyday and familiar materials.
The artist always uses the materials we are most familiar with to create his works, whether it is discarded plastic bags, coral fleece commonly used in daily plush toys, or colorful paper and soft rubber, and amusement park facilities. Plastic materials that are often used, all of them are the materials of the utensils we use every day, but they evoke a fresh feeling in the hands of the artist.
Hoffman also hopes that the audience will take the initiative to touch the huge animals he created. When you reach out and touch, the feeling of the material will leave a reaction and memory through the skin for the first time.
There is also a set of interactive animal sculptures in the exhibition hall. Anyone who comes to this passage can use colorful plasticine to add stripes or spots to white cats and dogs, whether it is earrings or necklaces, and sign them. Name or leave a mark. Artists welcome everyone to participate in the creation of art works. Everyone who comes will leave their own traces of creation, and subsequent people can choose to join or overwrite it.
This is a work of co-creation, not for any specific profound meaning, but simply to relax and play in it boldly, to do it directly, to embrace uncertainty, and there is creativity and joy in the unknown.
Copyright belongs to Florentine Hoffmann
Photography of this group / Wang Xudong and Li Zhiyuan