salon du dessin contemporain 2009

Josef Hofer, who has been a resident of an Austrian institution for more than 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 considers him “one of the greatest of the brut contemporary artists.” A significant number of his works was donated to the Centre Pompidou collection in 2021 while the gallery became the owner of his estate in 2022.

More than twenty years ago, Harald Stoffers began a fictional correspondence with his mother, in which all the letters started with “Liebe Mutti.” He began this exercise at a workshop for people with disabilities where he worked. He began by distributing them among his fellow workers as small torn notes. Presented in a film by Youssef Tabti at the Grand Palais in 2009, his work was included in institutions as the Mona (Australia), the Hamburger Bahnhof—National Gallery of Contemporary Art (Berlin), the Pinacoteca Agnelli (Turin), Galerie der Villa (Hamburg), l’Oliva Creative Factory (Portugal), le Dox Art Center (Prague), and the Maison rouge (Paris). A significant number of his works were donated to the Centre Pompidou collection in 2021.

In a reminiscent of his past financial difficulties, Raimundo Camilo, a modest Brazilian worker interned in a psychiatric hospital, began drawing imaginary banknotes. Made of makeshift materials, such as wrapping papers and prints from the administration, he offered them to hospital staff, especially women. The artist who claimed not to make art, but simply “his duty” is today in the museum collections of LaM (France), at the Museu Oscar Niemeyer (Brazil) where he was exhibited with Bispo do Rosario, and in the private collection of the artist Arnulf Rainer (Austria).