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Artist David Hoffos makes the creepy sublime with his tiny houses of horrors

By Toronto Life
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(Image: Daniel Neuhaus)
(Image: Daniel Neuhaus)

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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