Julius Hofman - Initiative and Surrender

Julius Hofman seems to be on his way towards becoming the next cult painter: his acrylic-on-canvas works are sinister but tempered with elegance and dreamlike pageantry, featuring strange anthropomorphic monsters and animalistic humans. His paintings are created using a variety of instruments from the ordinary brush to saws, cutters, cardboard and glue. Digital imagery also often appears in Hofmann’s work, complementing the symbolic chaos of his visual fables. 

Hofmann’s training as a filmmaker is also very much evident in his aesthetic, which emulates an almost three-dimensional set that is ideal for an array of the wildest narratives. In one painting, a gargantuan jester towers over the miasmic blanket of mist that has settled over a forest, while another painting depicts the remnants of a house being swallowed by a deluge of snow. Given the textural richness and sensitive execution of these paintings, we’ll certainly be keeping an eye on Hofmann’s growing body of work.