GRILLES DE VALIDATION 2010
Grilles de Validation diptych, framed pigment prints (30x200cm)
In 1899, Cézanne was honoured by a decisive commission
from the influential Paris patron Ambroise Vollard.
To produce his portrait, Cézanne held 115 morning
poses, each lasting two hours. Hofmann was interested
in how this ritual experience must have aff ected two men
caught up in divergent temporalities and issues; while one
painted and applied himself to the harmonious distribution
of colour notes on the surface of the canvas, the other
was bored or thinking about numbers, hoping to maximise
his return on investment.
On the train that takes him
to work in Brussels every day, Hofmann forces himself
to mechanically fill ll in 115 sudoku grids taken from the
newspaper distributed to commuters. By giving meaning
to the sheets that Vollard seems to be holding in his lap,
the artist interrrogates the way in which a link is established
between a work and its validation circuit.
Grilles de Validation, detail