Entering ‘Scenes from the House Dream,’ David Hoffos’ combined retrospective/site-specific installation at the Art Gallery of Nova Scotia in Halifax, one passes through heavy curtains which shut out all external light, a hint of the level of control the artist exercises over all aspects - visual, auditory, even intuitive - of his work’s presentation. The room is dimly lit by flickering screens and alcoves, and the entire show is set at dusk, the magic hour when colours take on a hyperreal quality.
The first piece encountered, Circle Street, sets the tone with its tableau of of a suburban street, behind which an old-fashioned cathode ray television, undisguised, loops an infinite fireworks display. In the foreground, projected onto the glass, a child rides a bicycle through this endless suburban dream space. The effect is lyrical, a paean to the endless yellow-lit streets of mid-century subdivisions.
From the corner of my eye, I can see a figure of a young woman, a teenager really, sitting in the corner. She appears to be reading. In initial encounter, barely apprehended, seems the dictionary definition of uncanny - in the dim light I can’t tell if the figure is real or another artwork. The moment of hesitation reveals a vulnerability in the viewer, our willingness to believe our eyes combined with a Canadian politeness that makes it rude to stare long enough to decide if the image is flesh and blood or a clever simulacrum. As in the earlier piece, Hoffos is interrogating bourgeois mores, the fantasies that hold together an alienated society.
The exhibition continues in this vein - another memorable piece, Airport Hotel, depicts a hotel room fashioned out of balsa wood, located on the runway of an airport - a figure paces anxiously in and out of view. Again, the artist is conjuring poetry from the displaced glow of television sets from distant windows, from the dreams of hotel occupants, and the iconography of the recent past, televisions, airstream trailers, yachts.
More figures occupy other corners, girls sitting and taking notes or standing around as if waiting for a friend. Is it my imagination, or has Hoffos set up motion detectors, triggering the figures’ glances in my direction as I approach, their quiet acknowledgement as I pass them by? Either way, their presence, somewhere in between solidity and pure light, sends shivers down my spine. They play to some childlike notion of ghosts and vapours. The viewer navigates this show by peering through tightly angled viewpoints into elaborate tableaux, some a DIY variation on high-concept ‘new media’ art, others that more closely resemble the Surrealists collisions on the operating table. All the while, muffled sounds of engines and machinery immerse us in the artist’s total environmental vision - it is a triumph of precision, yet maintains its beating heart and stirs our senses to ponder both the mundane and the immortal.
An installation view is available at the artist’s website.
