ti odio

On the occasion of the solo exhibition ti odio, Siggi Hofer (Bruneck/Brunico, 1970) presents a new site-specific installation consisting of painted panels and assemblages. The artist has developed a painting practice with a conceptual substructure that distances itself from the representation of reality. Drawn and painted forms are based on existing drawing instructions based on a modular grid system. The painted motifs appear simplified and are reminiscent of early video games and emojis. In Siggi Hofer’s installation, images, texts, and objects intertwine to form a non-hierarchical order and become part of an independent but fragmented narrative. Together with the other elements of the exhibition, the symbols appear as free signifiers. In his painterly practice, Hofer creates his visual vocabulary of signs whose meaning shifts depending on the viewer’s context and interpretation patterns. In Siggi Hofer’s most recent works, selected motifs and personal quotations are part of a disguise of meaning, with words and images evoking a state of doubt. The artist attempts to steer our reading in the wrong direction through analogies and connotations. Hofer’s motifs undergo a process of objectification in which images become seemingly neutral symbols. In some details, the artist develops formal variations within the grid that lend the abstracted subjects a personal and deliberately unfinished character. Siggi Hofer refuses to adhere to the standards of wall presentation of painting and makes their negotiation an inherent part of his work. Some of the painted panels are assembled into potentially performative objects, while others take on an architectural relation. In the group of painted panels, the artist explores formal variations of a banner on which he applies painted text or letters made of black beads. Each bead is a module for the composition of lines that can be formed into letters and ultimately words. In ancient painting, banners with painted words lent meaning, context, and emotional depth to the depictions. One example of this is the fresco portrait of the married couple Konrad and Irmgard Krille, which is kept in Bolzano Cathedral and was painted at the beginning of the 14th century. ti odio is an exhibition that addresses the unspoken, harmonies and disharmonies, interpersonal relationships, questions of identity, the politics of representation, misunderstandings, and corrections, Siggi Hofer’s work and life, and ultimately all of us while remaining open to new interpretations.