Twitter portraits

Class Notes
Class of 1987
Posted on June 25, 2013

I’ve always had an urge to draw and paint, but after I left Deerfield and Hodo’s great art classes (in ’87) it actually took two decades of job experimenting (as a programmer, math teacher, securities lawyer, head of M&A) before I finally decided to banish any thought of retirement plan out of my head and instead focus completely on painting a few years ago. Having a family and two children didn’t really make this into an easy decision, but so far I don’t regret a single day 🙂

Currently I’m working on a series of paintings – (actual and imaginary) Twitter portraits – that is based on the profile pics people use on Twitter and plays with the notions of identity, privacy and anonymity. The series comprises 14 paintings so far – all oil on unprimed canvas (22″ x 30″): artists (Ai Weiwei, Richard Prince), musicians (William Basinski, Max Richter), Pope Benedikt, a druglord (Benjamin Arellano-Felix) and a bare-breasted spam follower are among the depicted individuals. The series will hopefully shown in fall/winter for the first time:

http://rh3.de/twitter-portraits

I’ve also attached the latest one (Addie Wagenknecht).

By the way, I’m also looking for a gallery to represent my works in the US, so if someone’s into this kind of thing, drop me a line 😉

All the best

Ralf

Ralf Hoffmann

Class of 1987

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