Artist David Hoffos makes the creepy sublime with his tiny houses of horrors
David Hoffos has a knack for finding the eerie in the everyday. The Lethbridge-based artist spent five years building his 20-piece installation Scenes From the House Dream. Turns out it’s more like a nightmare. Once in the black-painted, maze-like gallery, viewers can’t see their own feet. Video, played on television monitors, then reflected into glass-windowed dioramas using mirrors, helps create what feels a whole lot like the inside of Stephen King’s twisted mind. Lonely landscapes—from broken-down trains to abandoned bungalows—are backdrops for projections of tiny people trapped in worlds the size of architectural models. You’ll find yourself playing a peculiar game of Where’s Waldo as the shimmering folk move like ghosts through the dark. (Watch your back: a few are life-sized, and scattered throughout the gallery.) Just as you peer into the lives of others, you’ll feel as if you’re being watched.
ART
David Hoffos
To Dec. 31, Museum of Contemporary Canadian Art
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David Hoffos has a knack for finding the eerie in the everyday. The Lethbridge-based artist spent five years building his 20-piece installation Scenes From the House Dream. Turns out it’s more like a nightmare. Once in the black-painted, maze-like gallery, viewers can’t see their own feet. Video, played on television monitors, then reflected into glass-windowed dioramas using mirrors, helps create what feels a whole lot like the inside of Stephen King’s twisted mind. Lonely landscapes—from broken-down trains to abandoned bungalows—are backdrops for projections of tiny people trapped in worlds the size of architectural models. You’ll find yourself playing a peculiar game of Where’s Waldo as the shimmering folk move like ghosts through the dark. (Watch your back: a few are life-sized, and scattered throughout the gallery.) Just as you peer into the lives of others, you’ll feel as if you’re being watched.
ART
David Hoffos
To Dec. 31, Museum of Contemporary Canadian Art){kind=link}
I went to the installation yesterday and I highly recommend it. It’s incredibly atmospheric. There’s a pervasive sense of dread throughout the work and it’s stories are morbidly compelling. The lonely women pacing the floor of her airport hotel… A man atop a cliff who may be suicidal. A frightened resident of an isolated woodland trailer… All lonely and in jeopardy. But it’s not without some black humour. An inept security guard paces the floor of a museum, oblivious to the burglars skipping out with huge canvases behind him. In all, it makes for a thrilling afternoon. Go, and take a friend.