Rewind: David Hoffos
Gallery TPW, Toronto
The figures in David Hoffos's Scenes from The House Dream, Phase Two, like insomniacs, are occupied with middle-of-the-night activities. In one of several tiny dioramas, watched through a window set into the wall, a woman walks back and forth in a hotel room, distractedly holding a drink and watching TV. Behind her in perpetual night there's an airport where the only visible activity is a light traversing the docking area. This miniature tableau provokes an uncanny experience of dislocation, as my mind shifts perspective to project myself into this scene.
The show is constructed so that one must cautiously avoid television sets placed on plinths like sculptural objects; the TVs, along with projectors and DVD players, are part of its technical wizardry. The woman in the hotel room, it turns out, is not in the hotel room. She is a video image that appears on a TV in the gallery, which reflects off the tilted pane of glass separating the viewer from the room in which she appears. The airport is another optical trick—a miniature model surrounded by mirrors to create the illusion of a three-dimensional landscape. Similarly, the docking area's tiny moving light is another reflection from a TV monitor.
There are at least two technical antecedents to this work: the phantasmagoric lantern shows of the 18th and 19th centuries, which created moving, ghost-like illusions that were often accompanied by sound effects or music; and the 19th-century miniature dioramic tableaux that were viewed through an aperture. Unlike these early forms of parlour entertainment, Scenes from The House Dream reveals how the illusion operates, and in this is the secret of its success. At an earlier show by Hoffos, Another City, exhibited at the Art Gallery of Ontario in 2002, audience members actually entered the dioramic space. In the darkened room there was a projection of a couple making out, oblivious to the people around them. The illusion was so convincing that viewers were afraid to disturb them. In Scenes from The House Dream, the illusion is more transparent. The cardboard cut-out is visible behind the phantom fidgeting at the front of the gallery, projection devices are placed in the viewing space and, on close inspection, gaps reveal the elaborate models behind the walls.
With only a skeletal narrative, the viewer has no choice but to pay attention to the mediated forms—the video images, the backdrops, the sets, the optical distortions of this dream house. In each of the piece's scenes, time stands still. Each installation creates a sense of suspense, building toward an event that will never arrive. While the viewer is forced to wait, the lonely dimensions of the spectacle unfold. Winter 2004
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