DÉCALAGES

Bettina Hoffmann

The exhibition runs from September 7 to October 6, 2007
The gallery is open Tuesday through Saturday from noon to 5 pm

Opening and launch of PREFIX PHOTO magazine #15
Saturday September 8, 2007 at 7 pm

“Décalages” (Things out of synch) are things that don’t match up, that are out of line. They are gaps that Bettina Hoffmann tries to isolate in her work, those moments when the structure of social relations becomes visible. She has created the dramatic structure of her most recent work around these at once decisive and fleeting moments. Momentum and Décalage, composing the exhibition Décalages, are a part of this cycle of works.

Combining the properties of photography, cinema and sculpture, Bettina Hoffmann creates kinetic tableaus whose characters, paradoxically, are frozen. The camera details the scene, as if tempted to contain it, heightening the friction between immobility and movement. The image circumscribes, explores and describes what it shows with rigorous meticulousness. The least detail is inspected: a crumpled sheet, a bare floor, red grapes spilling out of their bowl, a barely-closed left hand. The tight framing directs the gaze and obliges us to contemplate the characters’ gravity, their withdrawal into themselves and their silence, to examine their relations, their mutual dependence and seeming absence. Suspended in time, these scenes show what the narrative, moving towards its conclusion, might have omitted if it had not been interrupted.

This lingering of the image distorts and distends the moment. In this space-time, viewers orbit around the characters, being at the same time included (so close) and kept at the periphery of the image, carried along the characters they observe in a strange meditation. This unique way of constructing the work enables Bettina Hoffmann to inscribe her thoughts on the relations between people through a very up-to-date questioning of the language and composition of narrative.

In addition to the moving works on exhibit in the gallery, a static work will be shown on the façade of the building at 4001 Berri Steet.

The exhibition Décalages by Bettina Hoffmann is presented on the occasion of Le Mois de la Photo à Montréal, whose curator is Marie Fraser.

Originally from Berlin, Bettina Hoffmann lives and works in Montreal. She studied at the Rijksakademie van beeldende Kunsten of Amsterdam, at the California Institute of the Arts and received her Master’s from the Hochschule der Künste in Berlin. A multidisciplinary artist, her practice includes installation, photography and video. In the last 15 years, her work has been widely presented in Europe, the United States and Canada. Her most recent exhibitions have been presented at the Saidye Bronfman Cnetre for the Arts (Montreal), at the Southern Alberta Art Gallery (Lethbridge), at VU (Quebec City) and Optica (Montreal). Her works will also be presented this year in Victoria, and next year in Quebec City, Los Angeles and Toronto. You can visit her website at www.bettinahoffmann.net.

The artist would like to thank the Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec as well as the Canada Council for the Arts for their support.

Dazibao thanks the artist and Le Mois de la Photo à Montréal for their generous collaboration and its members for their support. Dazibao receives financial support from the Canada Council for the Arts, the Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec, and the Conseil des arts de Montréal. Dazibao is a member of the Regroupement des centres d’artistes autogérés du Québec.