the common room
48x 48 PIXELS by Anna Newman
’87 60
RALF HOFFMANN artist
Winter 2014
The art of portraiture has evolved over the centuries, from elegant paintings of Renaissance monarchs to magazine photo spreads of celebrities. With his Twitter portrait series Ralf Hoffmann ’87 is using this celebrated art form to examine identity and authenticity in the virtual world. Mr. Hoffmann, a programmer/teacher/lawyer turned artist, was inspired by the many compressed, processed images that populate the web—particularly as user profile pictures on Twitter. “Seeing how people present themselves or pretend to present themselves (or someone else) within 48 x 48 pixels on Twitter seemed to bring up a number of interesting questions—about perception, self-perception, identity, anonymity, evanescence,” explained Mr. Hoffmann. “Interestingly, a lot of these questions are the same as those arising from the web and social media in particular, with respect to data protection, surveillance, or online advertising.” Mr. Hoffmann creates his modern portraits through a fusion of old and new techniques; he starts by cropping, expanding, and manipulating low-resolution Twitter user profile pictures. He then paints the images in oil on canvas, an “old school” technique. The paintings of such figures as Pope Benedict, drug lord Benjamin Arellano-Felix, musician William Basinski, and artist Ai Weiwei seem photorealistic, but reflect the uncertainty behind virtual identity. Who is the person being depicted? How does he or she want to be perceived? And, is the image an authentic representation of the subject? Mr. Hoffmann’s Twitter portraits evoke all of these questions. Less ambiguous is Mr. Hoffmann’s passion for art, which dates back to his days at Deerfield, when he studied with former art teacher Dan Hodermarsky. “[Mr. Hodermarsky’s] personality, warmth, and open-mindedness provided much more than you’d have expected from any art course—a deep appreciation of both life and art,” reflected Mr. Hoffmann. After graduating from Columbia University, Mr. Hoffmann pursued a number of careers, but, he said, “Painting has been a steady companion.” Painting on the weekends helped him deal with the stress of working in corporate mergers and acquisitions, and as a software programmer, Mr. Hoffmann was able to easily blend programming with his artistic interests. “For one language training project I included hundreds of self-made photographs taken with eight different cameras, from Polaroid to medium format film to create the impression of randomly found pictures.” A few years ago, Mr. Hoffmann decided to focus solely on his art, and he recently started to exhibit his work. “Until recently I basically practiced ‘outside art,’ enjoying the freedom to do whatever I want without thinking about an audience, art trends, or living room compatibility. With the Twitter series, however, the urge grew to show this to more than a couple of friends. Some of my pool paintings were shown by a German gallery this past summer, and I’m in contact with galleries in Switzerland and Belgium [about] an exhibition of the Twitter series.” Mr. Hoffmann is hopeful that his Twitter series will soon make its way across the Atlantic, but in the meantime, you can see the series and Mr. Hoffmann’s other work on his web site: rh3.de/twitter-portraits. Image of Sylvia Monnier provided by Ralf Hoffmann