黑料不打烊

Blending art with design, paper and a little imagination, artist builds her own 鈥榗astles in the air.鈥� Think children's paper and cardboard cities, all grown up. 鈥淓nvironment is the central factor in my work. My surroundings and the complexities of location are heavy influences in what I build,鈥� she says. The artist is referring to her large-scale paper constructions, which are replicas of modern structures. She then uses video to capture the decomposition of these paper installations. It鈥檚 a multi-faceted tale of the modern metropolis that perfectly captures the ever-changing face of our contemporary world.

So it鈥檚 even more fitting that the New York artist recently worked on one of her gigantic paper projects as part of an art-residency program at TechTown鈥檚 Quark Gallery in Detroit. 鈥淚 absolutely love Detroit and it is easily one of my favorite places I have ever been,鈥� she gushed to 黑料不打烊 in a recent interview. 鈥淚t is a city humming with energy and filled with a complexity of beauty that only decay can highlight.鈥� Indeed, Hoffman鈥檚 work artfully personifies the rise and fall of a city in one of the country鈥檚 most complex urban landscapes.
Her project is a four-stage process, where she painstakingly reconstructs buildings out of paper, measuring every crevice, length and leveling contained by the architecture. These paper "slipcovers" of sorts are later used as the backdrop for a slideshow, from images taken by local digital artists. The final stage of this paper-turned-performance piece is Hoffman鈥檚 time-lapse video of the work as it disintegrates, which recreates an artistic replica of urban decay. 鈥淸Detroit] appears ravaged by economic flight and is in the slow but steady process of rebuilding itself,鈥� she reiterates. (Two views of the Detroit work; Above: "In Hoping We Find Ourselves": Amsterdam meets Cass; at Right: in collaboration with Ani Garabedian).

Her work takes on a slightly different tone than many other artists who have sought to capture the city: 鈥淚t seems like many artists working in Detroit either focus their eye on how that history has visually manifested itself or create works to trigger new hopes and experiences.鈥� Hoffman's work does double-duty, incorporating both of these ideas. She says initially, this caused her some trepidation. 鈥淎s an outsider, I felt incredibly nervous about entering into that discussion but as an individual, growth and decay, especially in man-made structures, are at the heart of my explorations.鈥� Which is why the artist鈥檚 larger-than-life reconstructions (and deconstructions) are so aptly-fitting in this context.

Hoffman has 鈥榖uilt鈥� with other media as well, such as fabric, but gives preferential treatment to paper, as she says, 鈥渋t鈥檚 environmentally responsible given the scale of my sculptures. It鈥檚 complicated to work with and accessible, which I like. It鈥檚 well-suited to ephemeral installations and lightweight.鈥� (Left: Art in Odd Places: Four Doors, 2011).

Still, working with the media comes with its own set of challenges. Despite her five-week deadline and the overall enormity of the piece, the biggest obstacle regarding this installation was unpredictable weather. 鈥淚 foolishly budgeted a day [for installation] because I wanted the piece to be fresh for the opening and was nervous about rain and wind destroying it before anyone had seen it.鈥� Yet despite her well-laid plans, Hoffman and her assistants battled mother nature anyway. 鈥淎t five in the morning that day, I showed up to finish the last small pieces and at eight we began with the roof, which was finished and in place by nine, and had flown off by ten. The rest of the day was a epic battle between us and the wind. We won,鈥漵he adds, laughing.