INBOX: Pierre-Philippe Hofmann – Lieux Communs / Gemeenplaatsen
© Pierre-Philippe Hofmann
The artist will be present on Sunday 5 September from 2.30 pm. to give more information about his exhibition.
(...) Even if the language border often becomes the subject of Community disputes, the work Gemeenplaatsen has no political message whatsoever: the border between two regions (north and south) can be seen here as an opportunity to realise a work of great scope, a path that crosses the country from one end to the other, from west to east. However, the intention to follow this line - actually an itinerary, a thoroughfare - is more than a mere incentive: it is in fact a modus operandi, an ideal and neutral working process that makes it possible to take a photographic and documentary look at what at first sight may appear to be a banal landscape: an infra-landscape, in fact, a term coined by André Rouillé to describe a landscape that is not spectacular; a minimal landscape, without any striking motif or subject (...).
Anne Wauters
(...) In his photos, Pierre-Philippe Hofmann records the process of urbanisation from the inside, in those places where spatial transformation takes root and where the major and, above all, minor decisions in the process of urban development are made. The real confrontation that Hofmann brings to us in his series of photographs results from the way in which he provides direct access to the bare, informal locus delicti, the place where the passage à l'acte takes place. With Hofmann, we step timidly into the "factory" where man is the agent of the transformation of the living environment and the constant adaptation to modern requirements, new trends, global developments, individual tastes, colours and forms, a living environment that has long since ceased to be governed by a collective agreement on tradition, equilibrium and heritage, but increasingly by small human constraints such as passion, envy, stubbornness, imitation, ostentation, carelessness and wastefulness (...)
Pieter Uyttenhove
Pierre-Philippe Hofmann – Portrait of a Landscape
01.09.2021 – 09.01.2022
De Singel – Wandelgangen
In the autumn of 2021, the Flanders Architecture Institute and De Singel will welcome artist Pierre-Philippe Hofmann. Follow in his footsteps as he leads you on a journey from Switzerland’s borders to its geographical centre, Älggi-Alp, in the canton of Obwalden.
On 31 August at 8 pm (De Singel – Muziekstudio) Curator Heidi Ballet and researcher Steven Humblet will discuss Pierre-Philippe Hofmann's work, the dialogue between architecture and landscape, and how to capture this dialogue in an exhibition and a book; moderated by Simon Delobel, director of KIOSK.
PUBLICATIONS
Lieux Communs – Gemeenplaatsen (2010)
Texts by Christophe Pourtois, Pieter Uyttenhove, Anne Wauters
21,5 x 27 cm; color illustrations
© ARP2
For sale at € 30 in the M HKA shop
Portrait d’un Paysage, tentative suisse – Porträt einer Landschaft : Schweizer Versuch (2020)
415 pp.; 30 x 20 cm; color illustrations
Texts by Raphaël Brunner, Anne-Françoise Lesuisse, Urs Stahel
© MER / B&L
For sale at € 49 in the M HKA shop
The artist proposes to deliver a limited edition of this book on foot.
For more information, contact pphhofmann@gmail.com