josef hofer
the figure in the mirror
For its fifth solo exhibition dedicated to Josef Hofer (b. 1945), the gallery reaffirms the Austrian artist’s essential place in the contemporary Art Brut landscape. His trajectory, inseparable from his work, transcends established boundaries.
The exhibition will showcase around thirty previously unseen works. To mark the occasion, a bilingual monograph will be published, together with a 170-page critical essay by the exhibition’s curator, Fabrizio Donini Ferretti*. In parallel, the launch of his online catalogue raisonné will crown decades of artistic practice, documenting nearly 2,200 works.
A resident of an Austrian institution for more than 40 years, Josef Hofer does not speak; he draws. Incessantly. In the mirror he holds up to himself and to us, figures strive to take flight within the confines of the frame, with an eroticized, untamed grace. His work, traversed by a constant tension between body and psyche, has established itself as one of the most distinctive and accomplished expressions of contemporary drawing. Perhaps this is the clearest sign of its universality: a work that does not deny categories, but exceeds them, inviting us not so much to abolish them as to move beyond them.
Considered by Arnulf Rainer to be “one of the greatest contemporary Art Brut artists,” Hofer is represented in numerous public and private collections, while a significant body of his work has entered the collections of the Musée National d’Art Moderne (Centre Pompidou).
Josef Hofer, who has been a resident of an Austrian institution for over 30 years, does not speak. He draws. Tirelessly. In the metaphoric mirror that he uses and reaches out to us, people attempt to flee from the straitjacket of the frame with eroticized and untamed grace. His works - to which Michel Thévoz has devoted several essays - depict a founding duality between body and psyche. Present in numerous museum collections, he is also part of great private collections: A. de Galbert (France), A. Shaker (Switzerland) and even in the collection of A. Rainer (Austria), who considered him “one of the greatest of the brut contemporary artists.” A significant number of his works were donated to the Centre Pompidou collection in 2021 while the gallery became the owner of his estate in 2022.