Are Avant-gardists old- fashioned?

At least not considering the yet uninterrupted demand, which is issued to the artist: «Create something new!» However, Robin Hoffman remains doubtful of the supposed right to demand the «truth», and to replace dogmas with new dogmas, suspecting an anachronistic attitude. On the contrary, the manner in which he deals with the «duty» to strive for progression is reserved, discrete – the bad boy pose is not his style. In his opinion, the establishment of sustainable innovation occurs not through loud, self-convinced pageantry, and certainly not through scandal. Hoffmann assumes the presence of the inventive in the terse, in the inconspicuous, in an ostensible irrelevance found in an unusual place.

Innovation occurs through concealment.

Robin Hoffmann compares the motion of concealment to the work of a «secret agent», who collects, utilizes and brings into application unobserved and unknown information. As a direction of movement, he has chosen for himself the «feint», the feigned punch that calculates the countermovement and uses it to its own means. While the 20th century avant-garde favoured to heroically walk straight into the trap. Hoffmann considers the indirect path more advisable: the premature exhaustion of the artistic means of representation is counteracted through tactics, hesitations and evasions.

Art is the hairline crack in society’s system.

Robin Hoffmann trusts in the energy of the gradual, of the effect of the subliminal. Art must attempt to cause scarcely noticeable injuries to the self-image, to the seemingly clear and unquestionable; it should irritate, step out of the frame, and, at its best, create interest, a question, a will to understand. Ideally as insistent as it is reserved: with sympathy – but no Pathos!

Michael Rebhahn