Julia Weber
Staff writer
On the upper level of Strohl Art Center, a collection of serene trees and landscapes have taken over the walls of the gallery.
From afar, Peter Hoffer’s landscapes are Romantic, Impressionistic pieces any viewer can connect with, but up close, the details really begin to emerge.
Hoffer’s solo exhibition “Tree Portraits” is on view now through July 17 in the Bellowe Family Gallery at Strohl. Susan and John Turben Director of CVA Galleries Judy Barie curated the exhibition.
When Hoffer was in college, he studied sculpture and painting. He found himself entranced by conceptual art and minimalist sculpture and employing it in his work. Simultaneously, Hoffer was drawn to the traditional landscapes that adorn the walls of many major museums and wanted to put himself to the test.
“I started looking at landscapes and painting and realizing, ‘Wow, man, this stuff is kind of hard to paint.’ I started getting into it. It’s almost like an old novel,” he said. “(If) you’ve been reading junk books for the whole summer, it’s good to return to a classic, right? That’s what I found myself doing.”
But Hoffer didn’t just want to paint beautiful landscapes: He wanted to push his work even further. Though Hoffer’s style evokes Romanticism and Impressionism, his process is highly conceptual and relies heavily on his background in minimalist sculpture.
He layers paint and varnish over one another as he pushes his materials to their limits. The results combine the familiarity of the subject with the process-driven effect of texture and materiality for a reflective faraway scene of the familiar.
“Coming from a sculpture background, being interested in materials, the process of layering the varnish — that’s where the fun is: Playing with the materials, which is the reason I like sculpture,” he said.
Hoffer’s interest in both the process of his work and its formal qualities was born out of his interest in Romanticism and the tradition of vernissage, a preview of an art exhibition before its official opening.
“Looking into it, the vernissage actually comes from the varnish. The night before what we would call an opening, artists would gather and put new varnish on the paintings to make the paintings look like they were freshly painted,” Hoffer explained. “I took the term vernissage, and I started putting layers and layers and layers of traditional dammar varnish on top of paintings.”
Hoffer does, on occasion, paint trees he sees in real life, but many of his subjects come from photos. He said he likes the generic nature of the trees he paints because viewers can relate to them more often than not and can make connections to their own lives.
“I like the anonymity of the place,” he said, “By applying the varnish, the idea was there would be so much varnish on the painting that the varnish itself would be the art.”
Hoffer said that although it doesn’t happen very often, he’s most inspired when he finds a piece of art that leaves him “floored.”
“It kinds of scares you, it kind of makes you feel lazy. … You build these walls around you thinking, and you realize ‘Oh, my God. I have so far, to go to match this.’ Then you find out that person is 17 years old or something, then you start thinking you wasted your life, but that’s inspiring,” he said. “Seeing other good stuff that’s good for you is inspiring, whatever it is.”
Though he said he is more interested in the process of making the work than the resulting end product, Hoffer is also fascinated by an audience’s reaction and what makes a piece successful or unsuccessful.
“What is it that compels people to like something or not to?” Hoffer asked. His work, with its universal entry point for connection and a laser-sharp focus on process-driven details, seems to be in pursuit of an answer to this very question. Maybe he’ll find the answer eventually, or maybe the answer is in the search itself, but ultimately, when all is said and done, Hoffer asks the viewer to decide.
