Maciej Hoffman: Be Free For Art

Maciej Hoffman was born in Wroclaw, Poland. In his third year at the Theological Academy in Wroclaw, his craving for philosophy was no longer as powerful as the vocation to become an artist. In 1988 Hoffman enrolled in the Academy of Fine Arts, having graduated with a dual diploma in sculpture and painting. Hoffman went on to pursue a career in advertising and marketing. In 2003 he began exploring web art and became passionate for it. 

Today Hoffman has returned to exhibiting his artwork. His existential and expressionist work is concerned with the trauma of all individuals and peoples who have suffered - and continue to suffer - worldwide. Hoffman ‘views his art as both a means of self-expression and a way of engaging in public discourse, depicting contrasts, emotions and powerful human experiences.’ He 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.’ Maciej is a Polish Jew. He has frequently organised and contributed to inter-faith exhibitions/events. For more, see www.maciej-hoffman.com.

He says:

'Our creativity, instead of being used to create more freedom, is used to build a more perfect and "magnificent" system of control and manipulation.

The space for what is irrational, imperfect or disordered becomes increasingly narrow. The room for trials and mistakes, for searching and for research, for listening to others and observing what happens around is gone.

Being inquisitive, asking questions is no longer valued in the world of simple and ready-to-go manifestations. Freedom is leaving us, step by step.

What is free of supervision, beyond statistics and classification, is the only real margin of freedom we can exercise – that is creation, that is art.'

Maciej Hoffman paints huge expressionist canvases depicting scenes of trauma. His paintings depict the distress caused through conflict and he seeks to use his art to generate discussion among people of all faiths and none about the causes of conflict. 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."

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. 

Be Free for Art: Maciej Hoffman, 9th - 27th July 2019, Willesden Gallery.

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Leonard Cohen - Amen.