Monte Clark

October 28 to November 28, 2020

Jeremy Hof’s paintings are compellingly sculptural, built from countless layers of acrylic paint over an extended time period in his studio. Whether painted up, sanded down, cast from a mold, or a combination of these practices, he continually tests the limits of what paint can do. His works straddle a unique space between weight and the presence of time, and strikingly optic colours that are bright, cheerful, and sometimes even psychedelic or kaleidoscopic.

In XXL Multi I, Hof uses paper as a substrate, composing a thick work slowly built up from flat layers of acrylic paint. As the multiple colours accumulate into a sculptural form—a hyperbolic gesture of mark making—the original support becomes redundant, and its shrinking, undulating edges buckle under the weight of the paint, comically illustrating the tragic failure of its intended purpose.

Orange Cube, Lite Green Cast Painting, Lite Yellow Cast Painting, and Purple Cast Painting are all formed using molds based on the artist’s earlier works, which were themselves created by starting from a substrate and layering paint outwards. To create these cast works, Hof starts by layering the medium into the mold moving inwards, and what we see on the outer surface is—dizzyingly—a replica of the final strokes from the original works.

Hof’s work has been exhibited at the National Gallery of Canada, the Vancouver Art Gallery, the Ottawa Art Gallery, the Richmond Art Gallery, Galerie de l’UQAM, the Mendel Art Gallery, the Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal, the Power Plant, the Museum of Contemporary Canadian Art (MOCCA), and numerous other venues. His work is collected by the Vancouver Art Gallery, BMO collection, RBC collection, TD Bank collection, and others. In 2008, Hof was the winner of the RBC Painting Competition.