I was at the launch of Maciej Hoffman's exhibition at SPACE Gallery Southgate tonight and enjoyed the opportunity to meet the artist and his family as well as viewing the immense unframed canvasses on which he has realised his vision of freedom.
There is great freedom and improvisation in his gestural brushstrokes overlaid with flecks and drips of paint creating the sensation that the artist has almost physically attacked the canvas, yet concept and composition also clearly underpin his expressionism. The images which emerge from this maelstrom of paint, although often founded in the darkness of existential angst, also exhibit a dynamism and energy which moves towards freedom.
Hoffman has said that the subjects which interest him are those "issues that puzzle us throughout the years, forming our way of looking at the world, changing us." Our reluctance to genuinely explore these issues features in a key image 'But what's going on', a question posed by those whose covered faces prevent them from seeing.
I also appreciated the chance to meet Ross Ashmore (who will exhibit at SPACE in March), Gosia Stasiewicz (one of the two artists who have opened SPACE, the other being Fionn Wilson), plus Voytek from the Best Before Project, which aims to educate the public about food waste, overproduction and its consequent ecological impact while also setting up an effective network for the re-distribution of food being wasted now. Also to be found among the interesting mix of people attracted by this exhibition was Rabbi Herschel Gluck OBE, founder of the Muslim-Jewish Forum which seeks to build bridges between Muslim and Jewish communities in the UK and around the world.
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Low - Especially Me.
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