Martin Höfer

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Martin Höfer (born October 25, 1982 in Sondershausen ) is a German artist and a representative of contemporary concept and media art .

Life

Höfer was born as the son of the German writer Gerald Höfer and the therapist Ute Höfer in Sondershausen and spent his childhood in Sondershausen and Bendeleben am Kyffhäuser .

He came into contact with art very early on, particularly through his father's cultural commitment. In the mid-1980s, Gerald Höfer organized, among other things, the series of events “The Café Pille Experiment” in Sondershausen with readings, cabaret performances and exhibitions.

From 1999 to 2003, Martin Höfer attended the Walter Gropius School in Erfurt, where he learned constructive and structural composition exercises based on ideas from Johannes Itten and László Moholy-Nagy's Bauhaus preliminary course .

In 2002 and 2004 he and his father first founded the ARTE FAKT publishing house and later the ARTE FAKT gallery. Various cultural events such as exhibitions and readings, festivals and film screenings took place in this context. In addition, several publications appeared.

In 2005 he began studying media art at the Leipzig University of Graphics and Book Art, first with Christin Lahr and from 2007 with Günther Selichar . Günther Selichar's class for mass media research and art in public media, which was newly founded in 2007, was of central importance for his artistic work. In the following years he had various guest stays with Lei Cox and Steven Dixon at Kunsthøgskolen i Bergen in Norway, with Hashem El-Ayoubi at Helwan University Cairo, Egypt, with Ramiz Sabbagh at Al-Balqa Applied University Amman, Jordan, and with Henrik B. Andersen at the Vilniaus dailės akademija , Lithuania. In 2013 he graduated with a diploma in fine arts with distinction. In 2015, he received a six-month Artist in Residence grant from the Kulturstiftung des Freistaats Sachsen to participate in the International Studio & Curatorial Program (ISCP) in New York.

Höfer lives and works in Leipzig.

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Universal multimedia poetry

Barbara Rossa

Martin Höfer Bannkreis Harmagedon , multimedia performance, Lichtreigen Festival, "Altes Gut" Burgau, Jena 2004

Barbara Rossa is a multimedia literature project by Gerald and Martin Höfer. It was created in 1998. The common preference for experimental varieties of music, the visual arts and the preoccupation with different digital media gave both of them the idea to combine all these genres. The aim of the project is to present literary texts in multimedia form and in performances. Barbara Rossa published numerous books, sound carriers, videos and sampler contributions between 1999 and 2005:

Books:

  • “Black Monologues”, 1999.
  • "Sophie", 2002.
  • “Poems between me nothing and you nothing”, 2003.

Sampler contributions:

  • “Belphegor”, text sound collage. Artists at the 12th Wave Gotik Treffen. 2002.
  • "Just", text sound collage. Sampler contribution to Flammenzauber III, 2003.

Video:

  • "Bannkreis Armagedon - Live in Jena", 2005.

Performances:

  • "Black Monologues"
  • "Confess!"
  • "The cassette"
  • "Sophie"

Artifact Publishing House & Artifact Gallery

The publishing house was initially founded to publish the multimedia works of Barbara Rossa. Other artists were later released under this label. Höfer was responsible for the series layout and illustration, for which he used his own previous works. The orientation to raise art to the mass media level is already clearly recognizable here. His graphic series “Schattendasein”, which illustrated “Poems between nothing for me and nothing for you”, was awarded the cross-category art prize of the Universities of Halle, Leipzig and Jena in 2005. Illustrations by him can be found in the following publications:

  • Barbara Rossa: "Sophie", 2002.
  • Barbara Rossa: “Poems between me nothing and you nothing”, 2003.
  • Oswald Henke: FSK 18, 2003.
  • Norbert K. Engelhardt: Nice in the last moment, 2004.
  • Chris Goellnitz: Genes in Blood Light, 2005.
  • Gerald Höfer & Michael Brust (Eds.): Tief im Schoße des Kyffhäusers, 2005.
  • Norbert K. Engelhardt: eternity, 2015.

The artifact gallery was opened in 2005 and aims to present modern art in rural areas. The exhibition “Multimediale Universalpoesie” 2005 showed works by Höfer used in the publications of the Arteffekt Verlagsanstalt.

Mass Media Research

Best buy me

Best Buy Me / No. 02 , billboard in public space during the exhibition On (plein) Air , Dresden 2009

The first work in the best buy me series was created in 2008. Since then Höfer has developed various best buy me works in different formats for various topics , depending on the exhibition location in the poster frame, as a billboard, facade banner. In 2012 he used advertising space on a racing car that drove to the end of the Monte Carlo Rally . In 2016 he intervened in the mass media for the first time with the work "Best Buy Me - No. 10" on a digital advertising board during the basketball Bundesliga game between Science City Jena and Alba Berlin. Characteristic for each of the works are colored strips on which the artist's handwriting says “best buy me”. The lettering becomes almost completely illegible in interaction with the stripes. Höfer derives the color combination for his best buy me works from the context with which he deals with the respective work. It's always about economic entanglements, business areas that are initially invisible or insignificant to outsiders. On closer examination, however, it becomes apparent that these are often just covering up tactics. He alludes to this with the illegibility of the provocative lettering ('buy me as cheaply as possible') and exaggerates it with the irritating stripes in high-gloss advertising aesthetics.

Capital Unemployed

CAPITAL UNEMPLOYED at the National Gallery in Vilnius

Höfer's work CAPITAL UNEMPLOYED is an appropriation of the inventory catalog of the collection from the Lithuanian National Gallery in Vilnius. The information from the database of which the artistic works were not in a public exhibition at the time of presentation, but whose condition was marked as 'stored', was shown randomly and simultaneously on the two outer e-billboards. In his presentation, Höfer deliberately avoided the image material in the database and focused the view on the plain text level.

Through the chosen representation of the work and the artistic intervention, he not only deals with the question of presence and absence, but also takes up a contemporary discourse between private and public collections, in which the accumulation of collected, but not exhibited works as dead Capital is listed.

Media Art Car / Siegen on behalf of art

Media Art Car at the Norisring 2012

The Höfer designed Porsche 911 GT3 Cup graduated not only - as is customary so far in Art Cars - a single race, but took throughout the 2012 season as part of the DTM at the Porsche Carrera Cup Germany in part. The Media Art Car was driven by Christina Nielsen , who started for the Farnbacher Racing team .

In addition to the aesthetic appearance that is appealing to the viewer, Höfer's artistic work conceals a complex concept that goes beyond the mere design of the car. While the main focus of the previous Art Cars was on the design of the car and the artist, Höfer focuses on how the media interacts with the Media Art Car. It was no coincidence that he chose the name for his project, which is based on Art Cars, but is different from it. He tries artistically to fathom how attention is created and maintained through the media. In addition to detailed project documentation, photo shoots with the driver and team, this also includes publications in online and print media. The renewed reproduction of the media output resulting from the publication is also one of Höfer's artistic strategies and, as appropriation art, is one of the most important areas of conceptual art . The works created in the course of the documentation and artistically processed photos from the shoots are shown at exhibitions as well as the Media Art Car itself.

EISKANAL / Citius, Altius, Fortius.

As part of his conceptual work of art, as an artist fully integrated into the coaching staff, Martin Höfer accompanied the German national bobsleigh team to all the venues of the 2015/2016 World Cup and the 2016 World Championships in Innsbruck.

The full integration of an artist into a national team in an Olympic discipline was a first in the history of conceptual art.

Approaches for Martin Höfer's investigations with artistic means within the work of art (among others):

  • To what extent is the action of the athlete during the competition comparable to an artistic performance?
  • To what extent does the entertainment and information industry (print / TV / online media) use this performance to achieve economic goals for their mass media and how do they do this?
  • What is the economic, ecological and energy consumption and what is the relationship between the provision of structural resources and the interest of the public?
  • To what extent does the work of art leave athletes and artists and viewers changed?
  • The anticipatory moment as a “hidden part” of the performance
  • The erotic element as an aesthetic component of sport
  • Can top-class sport become postmodern art through artistic intervention?

Exhibitions (selection)

literature

  • Martin Höfer / Andreas Ullrich: mass media approach , ARTE FAKT, 2018, ISBN 3-937364-58-7
  • ›10 years of Galerie Eigenheim‹ , Journal of Culture, Weimar , 2017, ISSN  1864-9882 .
  • ›1st NSK Folk Art Biennale - Past-Present-Future - 1984-2014-2045‹ , Verlag für Freunde, Leipzig , 2016, ISBN 978-3-946444-06-0
  • ›Das Glücksprinzip‹ , Journal of Culture, Weimar , 2016, ISSN  1864-9882 .
  • ›The Supershow‹ , ARTE FAKT Verlagsanst., Bendeleben , 2014, ISBN 978-3-937364-54-4 .
  • ›ON (PLEIN) AIR‹ , Mass Media Research u. Art in the media public Raum, ARTE FAKT Verlagsanst., Jena, 2010, ISBN 978-3-937364-50-6 .
  • ›Editing spaces. reconsidering the public ‹ , ger./engl. An Exhibition in the Public [Media] Space of Vilnius / Lithuania, 2012, ISBN 978-3-937364-51-3 .
  • ›DLF 1874 - The Biography of Pictures An inventory of the prerequisites‹ , ger./engl. FOTOHOF Edition, Salzburg, 2012, ISBN 978-3-902675-69-9 .
  • ›Multimediale Universalpoesie‹ , Höfer, Martin: ARTE FAKT publishing house, 2005.
  • Tim and Ulrich Upietz (eds.): Porsche Sport 2012 . Group C Motorsport Verlag, Duisburg 2012, ISBN 978-3-928540-70-4 , p. 115.
  • Energie AG (Upper Austria): Art in the Tower - Collection catalog of the floor exhibits . Energie AG Upper Austria, Linz, 2010.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. Hanna Schmalenbach: "On the base of art". In Münchner Merkur from March 1, 2016.