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Giant A ttack
Bo o k 1. Fl o re nti jn Hof ma n
S IZE DO ES MATTER
mat
Florentijn Hofman / Giant Attack
Floren t i j n Hof m a n Gi a n t A t t a c k
Humou r, S e ns a t io n, Ma x im u m I m p a c t
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“Huge works stand out amid architecture.”
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Floren t i j n Hof m a n Gi a n t A t t a c k
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Floren t i j n Hof m a n Gi a n t A t t a c k
Bi o Name : Florentijn Hofman Age / Sex / Nationality : 36/m/Nertherland About : Florentijn Hofman is a Dutch artist who was born in 1977. There have been Numerous articles about him including ‘Giant ‘Rubber Duck’ deflates in Hong Kong’s Victoria Harbor’ written by Jamie Wetherbe for Los Angels Times in 2013.
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“ I want to interact with p
works because I want peo And by placing them in p
offer a different perspec Ove r v i ew Humour, sensation, maximum impact; internationally renowned artist Florentijn Hofman (Delfzijl, 1977) does not settle for less. His sculptures are large, very large, and are bound to make an impression. Take Rubber Duck (2007) for example: a gigantic 26-metre-high yellow rubber duck. It is an inflatable, based on the standard model that children from all four corners of the world are familiar with. The impressive rubber duck travels the world and pops up in many different cities: from Auckland and São Paulo to Osaka. A very positive artistic statement that immediately connects people to their childhood.
Another example is Fat Monkey (São Paulo, 2010), a huge monkey tied together from 10,000 brightly coloured flipflops, the Brazilian shoe par excellence. The monkey is lying stretched out in the park, where his 15-metre length makes passers-by stop dead in their tracks. Hofman’s sculptures often originate from everyday objects. A straightforward paper boat, a pictogram of an industrial zone or mass-produced little toy figures can all serve as sources. They are all ready-mades, selected by Hofman for the beauty of their forms.
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people. I create big
ople to see them. ublic spaces, they
ctive for the space.”
Subsequently he crafts these into clear and iconic images; cartoonish blow-ups of reality that alienate and unsettle through their sheer size and use of materials. Nevertheless they are immediately identifiable and have an instant appeal. Inflatables, window stickers, agricultural plastic sheeting: for Hofman any material is suitable for turning into art. The skin of Big Yellow Rabbit (Örebro, 2011) for example consisted of thousands of Swedish shingles. A wooden frame was covered in reed for Muskrat (2004). For Look-out Rabbit (2011) he screwed together many wooden planks and for Fat Monkey he used
the aforementioned flip-flops. Hofman’s projects are often very labour-intensive. Gravity is being defied though by his love of materials and craft. Next to temporary and permanent sculptures in the public domain Hofman has realised several other projects. In Beukelsblauw (2004-2006) he brought attention to a block of houses, destined for demolition, by painting the buildings bright blue from top to bottom. For Zirkus Zeppelin (2008), on the occasion of the opening of motorway N470, Hofman chose 470 people to fly with him on the world’s largest zeppelin and view their
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everyday surroundings from the air. In these specific projects Hofman invites spectators to reconsider things that at first appear to be a matter of course. though artists do not always tend to value reactions of passers-by, for Hofman the audience is an essential part of his work. He takes due care of embedding his images in their surroundings. For Steelman (2011) he therefore engaged in conversation with young local residents of the Staalmanplein (Staalmansquare), a formerly rough neighbourhood in Amsterdam Slotervaart. Subsequently he conceived of an 11meter high bear with a pillow under its arm. Hofman: ‘The bear is tough and is standing straddle-legged. Those who live in this neighbourhood have to stand their ground. At the same time the bear is a symbol of fraternization. People socialise at the foot of the sculpture.’ An encounter with one of Hofman’s extraordinary sculptures invites us to stand still for a moment and to look; to really look and to take a picture if you like. Hofman: ‘My sculptures cause an uproar, astonishment and put a smile on your face. They give people a break from their daily routines. Passers-by stop in front of them, get off their bicycle and enter into conversation with other spectators. People are making contact with each other again. That is the effect of my sculptures in the public domain.’
Florentijn Hofman Steelman Amsterdam , 2011 Steel
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“ My sculpture an uproar,
astonishment
put a smile o
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Florentijn Hofman / Giant Attack
es cause
t and
on your face. �
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Florentijn Hofman / Giant Attack
Inte r v i ew How is it that you’re not afraid to Think BIG? The trick is to be fearless. I ventured into big art pretty early, while I was still in college. Some friends and I started a company in order to paint murals over the summer and a businessman hired us to work on this nuclear power plant
Is using local materials a BIG deal?
that had never been used. We painted a 15,000 m² Alpine mural on the side of
Site-specific material is important in
this cooling tower; we were young and
that local volunteers can identify with
we had nothing to lose and it felt really
the sculpture. Right now I’m working
great. We had everything that we needed
on ‘Dead Fly’ for the Day of the Dead in
from the very start: paint, cranes, sky
Mexico, where I plan to use typical pa-
lifts, cherry pickers, working in the open
per cutout decorations (papel picado)
air, interacting with the audience, which
that are instantly recognizable to the
are all vital to my work to this very day.
local community. If you want to grasp
The truth is, I felt comfortable right away.
people’s attention and adopt the work in
The secret in these projects is to create
their hearts, the best thing to do is get
a pleasant work floor and make sure
them to join in, so it’s nice to use a mate-
that the commissioner takes care of the
rial that they can recognize. I also like to
paperwork. I hold up my end of the bar-
showcase familiar elements from a dif-
gain and they hold up theirs, otherwise I
ferent perspective as was the case with
would spend all day dealing with govern-
using flip flops on ‘Fat Monkey’ in Brazil
ment officials and city councils!
and locally produced shingles on ‘The Big Yellow Rabbit’ in Sweden.
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Florentijn Hofman Fat Monkey San Paulo , 2010 Inflatable, Flip flops
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So what would happen if no one was allowed to take pictures of your work? Is hard evidence a BIG deal in temporary art? Isn’t the memory of it enough? I hear you get BIG reactions to your
That’s a really good question! Give me
work. What does the average person
some time and maybe I will come up
do when he/she sees it?
with a work that people are not allowed
People are very enthusiastic! They’re
idea. I’ve been thinking about making a
amazed by the sculptures and the ef-
mole sculpture with a blacked-out inte-
to take pictures of! I think it’s a great
fort that goes into them. We have almost
rior that people would have to get down
finished 'Slow Slugs' made out of 40,000
on their hands and knees to crawl into,
plastic bags that move in the wind. It will
without really knowing where they are
be unveiled for three days from Sep-
going, but that’s as close as I’ve ever
tember 7th onwards in Angers, France.
come to that concept! It would be inter-
The slugs will be ascending this steep
esting to make something so big and im-
staircase that leads up to a huge Catholic
pressive that you’re not allowed to take
church, essentially signifying their slow
pictures of. But then again museums do
crawl towards death. It’s about mortal-
that all the time! At the end of the day
ity, natural decay and the slow pollution
I like the audience to circulate my work
of plastic in commercialized societies, so
through the internet and social media,
it’s only fitting that it is so brief (3 days).
so if no one was around to see it, then I
Most people think it’s crazy to work for
would probably take pictures myself!
two months on something that will only exist for three days, but it’s all part of the concept. I always tell my interns that inevitably the time and effort they place in projects is forgotten as it is the end-result that always remains with them.
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Is demolishing your work a BIG occasion,
I actually thought it was graffiti, so I got a
isn’t it as much fun as building it?
blue bucket of paint and covered it up. It was only the next day, when their cranes
There’s a picture of the ‘Lookout Rabbit’
(with the blue & orange logo) showed up
being torn down after a year on the web.
that I realized what I had done, but it was
They brought in these cranes and cut his
too late. They thought I was totally crazy,
head clean off! There’s also a video of the
but for me it’s very important to control
‘Beukelsblauw’
somewhere
the life of the work right up until the end,
online. They hired this firm whose cor-
whenever that’s possible. It’s always a lit-
porate identity happened to be the same
tle sad, but missing the artwork is part of
color as the paint I had used to cover the
the process. That’s how my work comes
houses which was an amazing coinci-
full circle: you change a public space by
dence! The only thing I hadn’t noticed was
adding something new, then you change
this orange stripe on their logo, which they
it back again by taking it out which is
painted across the bottom of the prop-
when you start to miss it. It really chang-
erty, when it was ready to be torn down.
es how people perceive public space.
demolition
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I can tell you countless stories of activists collecting signatures to keep the art work in place, but like I said, missing it is part of the concept!
Florentijn Hofman Big Yellow Bunny Ă–rebro (SE) , 2011 Concrete, metal, wood and shingles.
You work on a grand scale, but what is it that attracts you to a space? To fill it up with the right proportions, so space is divided and interesting.
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Florentijn Hofman Big Yellow Bunny Ă–rebro (SE) , 2011 Concrete, metal, wood and shingles.
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“ Change a pub
by adding som
then you cha
again by taki
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blic space
mething new,
ange it back
ing it out.�
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Wri te r’s bi o Name : Michelle Aldredge Sex / Nationality : f/US About : She is a writer, photographer, and the creator of Gwarlingo, an arts and culture website that covers contemporary art, music, books, film, and the creative process. She has twenty years of experience working with artists and arts or-
Inqu i re
ganizations. From 1999-2012, I worked at The MacDowell Colony, the nation’s oldest artist colon
Florentijn Hofman (1977, Delfzijl, NL) slowly but surely conquers the world, not just with his Rubber Duck, but with his other works of art as well. The Rubber Duck was nevertheless what directly motivated me to start working on a large scale. ‘During the feasibility study for the twenty-meter-high bath duck, I trumpeted my plan all over Rotterdam. This spread the idea that I was making large-scale work. Which led to my contact with De Strip project in Vlaardingen’, explains Florentijn Hofman.That contact resulted in the making of a ten meter-high rabbit, fashioned from discarded wood: the Vlaardingse Reus (the Vlaarding Giant). After this came the gigantic dog ‘Max’, built from straw wrapped in red shrink film, in Groningen, and the thirty-meter-long muskrat in Nieuwerkerk aan den Ijssel, the lowest point in the Netherlands. “The muskrat is state enemy number one in the Netherlands. If the animal burrows through the dykes, then the whole country will be flooded, all the way up to Utrecht. The pests are understandably being exterminated on a daily basis.’ This succession of commissions made that Florentijn Hofman assembled a concise body of large-scale works. This predilection for large works, however, was not entirely due to chance. ‘During my training in Kampen in the Netherlands and my masters in Interdisciplinary arts in Berlin, I already developed a strong preference for the public space. In this way, I painted, together with three fellow-students, a gigantic 15.000-square-meter mountainscape on a cooling tower in the Kernwasser Wunderland amusement park in Kalkar, Germany.
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Iconic Art The painted houses are some of his most impressive projects. In 2004, in his home city of Rotterdam, he painted no less than twenty-two vacant houses cobalt blue. ‘Initially, the city commissioned me to paint fences. But I wanted something unusual; I wanted to tackle the whole in its entirety. Painting the houses blue all over brought out the splendour of the original architecture. In this way, using ‘Beukel-blue’ paint, I transformed a non-space into one of the most photographed city blocks in the Netherlands. After a three-year period, and despite much protest and blue funeral wreaths left by nearby residents, the houses were ultimately demolished to make room for urban renewal projects’, remembers Hofman. His strong commitment is also reflected in projects such as ‘Gele straat’ (Yellow Street 2003). ‘Even though Schiedam is the poorest municipality in the Netherlands, there were plans to build a new arterial road straight through its centre. This I visualised with my more than one-kilometre-long yellow street. It was my contribution to their ‘road to happiness’’. Very much in the way that the architecture of the Guggenheim museum has been marketed to become an icon for the Spanish city of Bilbao, Florentijn Hofman too is seeing his projects being implemented as city-marketing tools. ‘In earlier times, art was produced for the church, but nowadays cities and municipalities have taken over that role. I find the relation between man, architecture, and sculpture fascinating. Provided my artistic freedom remains safeguarded. New life Houses, a street, wood scraps, reed, a bath duck. By placing themes, methods, and materials taken from daily life in a different context and presenting them on a different scale, Florentijn Hofman elevates these rather common objects to the level of art. This is how he wants to amaze people. Although he is currently busily working on a number of permanent sculptures, like the Bear with the pillow for Amsterdam and the five paper boats for Rotterdam, most of Florentijn Hofman’s works, however, have a temporary character. ‘I myself don’t consider them either permanent or temporary. For they continue to exist in people’s memories. Their impact often changes the way a place is perceived forever. They give a non-place a new story, a new life’, concludes the artist. Alice in Wonderland Rubber Duck is indeed not as much about the artwork as about the process. Both the local production of the artwork and the social dynamics it generates are essential.
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“This succession of commissions made that Florentijn Hofman assembled a concise body of large-scale works.” ‘The Rubber Duck always appears in a different location, it has a performative character. This is how the Rubber Duck generates energy; it brings out the child in people. They are made to feel like Alice in Wonderland: the Rubber Duck shows them the world in a different way altogether.’ The world is Dutch artist Florentijn Hofman’s playground. Using apparently ordinary and simple devices, he manages to carry out interventions that are perfectly in tune with the surroundings. ‘Hofman is fully aware of the thin line between art and design, he can sense it perfectly. Not only does he select his locations carefully, but, by introducing an added dimension, he also manages to transcend the quotidian with a seemingly ordinary rubber bath duck.
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Florentijn Hofman Big Grey Monkey The Hague, 2009 Toys and ( cuddle ) sculpture
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E xh i bi t i on I n fo r m a ti on The art works by Florentijn Hofman are easy to recognize by the distinctive use of image, colour and measurements. Hofman creates, generally by assignment, clear works for the public space, always with his public in mind. The scale of his work, and the simple images, bring his messages clearly across. By using everyday icons of (single-use)culture he creates sculptures which appear very obvious. Powerful work which seems simple, but actually only comes about after careful research and consultation with people concerned. As a passionate coach Hofman points the general public to the possibilities of using your fantasy. Extra : Saturday 14th September 2013 – 08:00 PM Artist Talk : Florentijn Hofman in conversation with Jan Wijle (head afd. Art in public space by Stroom) about his work and his audience. Evening will be in Dutch.
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