James Hoff Work | Artist Statement & CV | Return to Artist List
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Artist Statement
Editorial practices and archival impulses guide my art-making processes across a diverse array of formats, including the artists’ book, live performance, writing, painting, sculpture, sound art, and online distribution. Working in a variety of media, I often employ minor histories as source material, which are then re-worked or re-contextualized, forging new glances and unexpected relations that reflect on contemporary practice or further compound, expand, or expose the underlying history. As an archivist, I gather minor histories from public and private archives, some of which I have amassed and others to which I have gained access. This work extends, and runs parallel to, the editorial work I have carried out with the non-profit art organization Primary Information, which I co-founded in 2006.
Using a variety of tactics, I often overlap and confuse source materials and techniques, embedding historical sources in new material to create fissures with their own unique histories. For example, a recent artists’ book titled Topten (2008) takes as its source the monthly Top Ten column from Artforum magazine. This publication, carried out on the column’s tenth anniversary, collected all Top Ten selections from 1998 to 2008. Reversing the strategies of Marcel Broodthaer’s Un Coup de dés Jamais n’Abolira le Hasard, which famously replaces every line of Stéphane Mallarmé’s poem of the same name with black rectangles, in Topten, all images accompanying the Artforum selections were blacked out. The result is ten years of art history reduced to text, a translation that inevitably highlights social connections and taste-making over aesthetic practice.
However, I do not limit source material to art history and often combine this history with popular culture and politics in an effort to surface ruptures between the two. At Artists Space in 2009, I developed the performance How Wheeling Feels When the Ground Walks Away, an eight channel sound work created from sampling approximately 50 riots that took place at rock concerts and in the streets during political unrest in India, China, and Greece. Similar themes inform a recent series of paintings that take the Black Panther Coloring Book—a document published and distributed by the FBI in 1965 in an attempt to discredit the Black Panther Party—as a reference point at the nexus of these various discourses. This series reappropriates the images and text used by the FBI, with the colors reversed (from black on white to white on black) in an effort to underscore the publication as a white on black hate crime.
These activities are supplemented by work on information systems and historical records. Under database culture, systems of distribution are paramount and I often challenge the predominant modes of dispersion in an attempt to question and circumvent the prevailing traditions. Over the last few years, I have developed a series of performative lectures under the title Inventory Arousal, which utilize two projectors—one playing video loops curated by other artists and one projecting slide images taken at random from a 4-terabyte archive of artists’ writings, artists’ books, sound art, and video art all obtained through social networking and peer-to-peer file sharing networks—and an improvised speech that links the two simultaneous projections anecdotally. This performance takes Vito Acconci’s notion that words are the “perfect multiple” as its guiding principle and seeks to create art out of “thin air” by using the digital objects that archive art history as a series of cues or plants. What is created through the two-hour performance is a constantly shifting narrative of dematerialization in the guise of a neo-academic lecture on post-war art. Both the anecdotes I share, and the infinite variety of possible connections made by the audience become the multiples that the audience carries away with them.
Upcoming and ongoing projects include a documentary film on the life of controversial East German filmmaker Sebastian Bleisch, a suite of redacted sculptures that question the role of the readymade in an era of digital distribution, and a new series of paintings that simultaneously investigate state lottery systems as a regressive tax on the poor and the role of game theory as a means for creating and distributing works of art.
Editorial practices and archival impulses guide my art-making processes across a diverse array of formats, including the artists’ book, live performance, writing, painting, sculpture, sound art, and online distribution. Working in a variety of media, I often employ minor histories as source material, which are then re-worked or re-contextualized, forging new glances and unexpected relations that reflect on contemporary practice or further compound, expand, or expose the underlying history. As an archivist, I gather minor histories from public and private archives, some of which I have amassed and others to which I have gained access. This work extends, and runs parallel to, the editorial work I have carried out with the non-profit art organization Primary Information, which I co-founded in 2006.
Using a variety of tactics, I often overlap and confuse source materials and techniques, embedding historical sources in new material to create fissures with their own unique histories. For example, a recent artists’ book titled Topten (2008) takes as its source the monthly Top Ten column from Artforum magazine. This publication, carried out on the column’s tenth anniversary, collected all Top Ten selections from 1998 to 2008. Reversing the strategies of Marcel Broodthaer’s Un Coup de dés Jamais n’Abolira le Hasard, which famously replaces every line of Stéphane Mallarmé’s poem of the same name with black rectangles, in Topten, all images accompanying the Artforum selections were blacked out. The result is ten years of art history reduced to text, a translation that inevitably highlights social connections and taste-making over aesthetic practice.
However, I do not limit source material to art history and often combine this history with popular culture and politics in an effort to surface ruptures between the two. At Artists Space in 2009, I developed the performance How Wheeling Feels When the Ground Walks Away, an eight channel sound work created from sampling approximately 50 riots that took place at rock concerts and in the streets during political unrest in India, China, and Greece. Similar themes inform a recent series of paintings that take the Black Panther Coloring Book—a document published and distributed by the FBI in 1965 in an attempt to discredit the Black Panther Party—as a reference point at the nexus of these various discourses. This series reappropriates the images and text used by the FBI, with the colors reversed (from black on white to white on black) in an effort to underscore the publication as a white on black hate crime.
These activities are supplemented by work on information systems and historical records. Under database culture, systems of distribution are paramount and I often challenge the predominant modes of dispersion in an attempt to question and circumvent the prevailing traditions. Over the last few years, I have developed a series of performative lectures under the title Inventory Arousal, which utilize two projectors—one playing video loops curated by other artists and one projecting slide images taken at random from a 4-terabyte archive of artists’ writings, artists’ books, sound art, and video art all obtained through social networking and peer-to-peer file sharing networks—and an improvised speech that links the two simultaneous projections anecdotally. This performance takes Vito Acconci’s notion that words are the “perfect multiple” as its guiding principle and seeks to create art out of “thin air” by using the digital objects that archive art history as a series of cues or plants. What is created through the two-hour performance is a constantly shifting narrative of dematerialization in the guise of a neo-academic lecture on post-war art. Both the anecdotes I share, and the infinite variety of possible connections made by the audience become the multiples that the audience carries away with them.
Upcoming and ongoing projects include a documentary film on the life of controversial East German filmmaker Sebastian Bleisch, a suite of redacted sculptures that question the role of the readymade in an era of digital distribution, and a new series of paintings that simultaneously investigate state lottery systems as a regressive tax on the poor and the role of game theory as a means for creating and distributing works of art.
CV
James Hoff
Born 1975 in Fort Wayne, Indiana.
Education
1998
Indiana University, BA in Political Science/Economics.
Selected Group Exhibitions
2010
“Pig Latin,” Nice & Fit Gallery, Berlin, Germany.
“Mapping the Studio,” Bastard, Oslo, Norway.
2009
“Indian Ocean,” Dispatch Bureau, NY, NY.
“Everything Must Go,” Asian Song Society, NY NY.
2008
“Black Friday,” Printed Matter, NY, NY.
“Artist-Initiated Magazines,” Rekord, Oslo, Norway.
“Psychotic Reactions,” KS Art, NY, NY.
“That Was Then . . . This Is Now,” PS1, NY, NY.
Selected Performances
2010
“Inventory Arousal,” Nova Scotia College of Art and Design, March 5.
“Inventory Arousal,” Pompidou, Paris, France, January 27.
“Inventory Arousal,” Sorbonne, Paris, France, January 27.
2009
“How Wheeling Feels When the Ground Walks Away,” Artists Space, NY, NY. November 17 - 22.
“Inventory Arousal,” Academy of Art, Oslo, Norway, November 2-4.
2008
“Inventory Arousal,” Ronnells/OEI Reading Series, Stockholm, Sweden, December 5.
“Inventory Arousal,” École Normale Supérieure Lettres et Sciences Humaines, Lyon, France, February 13.
“Inventory Arousal,” Academy of Art, Oslo, Norway, February 11.
2006
“Four Walls and a Window,” Elizabeth Center for the Arts, NY, NY.
“Airport War,” New Museum, NY, NY.
Selected Publications/Editions
2010
“Inventory Arousal” (Bedford Press), artist book, forthcoming.
2009
“Memoirs” (No Input Books), artist book.
2008
“Endless Namelesss” (No Input Books), artist book.
“Topten” (No Input Books), artist book.
“In Dreams Begin Responsibility” (AW Records), LP.
“Wavelength,” artist book.
2007
“Wedding Album” (Collaboration with the New Humans/AW Records), LP.
“Live at New Museum” (AW Records), CD.
“Airport War/Religious Knives,” CD.
2006
“Wall As Mistress” (AW Records), LP.
2005
“Over and Over the Endless Corner” (AW Records), 16 record album.
Selected Talks & Readings
2010
Confounding Expectations XI, New School for Social Research, NY, NY, April 08.
CAA, Chicago, IL, February 13.
2009
Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, MN, February, 5.
2008
St. Marks Poetry Project, New York, January 14.
Selected Writings
2010
“Significant Other,” Parkett, Forthcoming
“Get It In Writing,” OEI, (Stockholm, Sweden), Winter Edition.
2009
“Sweet Sweat,” ArtForum, December.“
In Which End Meets End,” Éditions Loevenbruck, (Paris, France).
2008
“Introduction to 0 To 9,” OEI, (Stockholm, Sweden), Fall Edition.
Publications: Editor and/or Publisher
2010
“Avalanche” edited by Willoughby Sharp and Liza Béar.
“Notebooks 1967-1970” by Lee Lozano (Facsimile Edition).
“XXX Macarena” by Tony Conrad/Jutta Koether/John Miller.
2009
“It Makes Me Wonder What Is Next For Her and For The Economy,” (White Columns)
“Rock/Music Writings” by Dan Graham.
“The Complete Edition of Newsletters” by Something Else Press by Dick Higgins (Facsimile Edition).
“DISBAND” by DISBAND.
2008
“Documents” by Art Workers’ Coalition (Facsimile Edition).
“Open Hearing” by Art Workers’ Coalition (Facsimile Edition).
“How to Make a Happening” by Allan Kaprow.
“Great Bear Pamphlets” (Facsimile Edition).
2007
“Coffee Coffee” by Aram Saroyan.
“The Complete Minimal Poems” by Aram Saroyan.
“Real Life Magazine: Selected Writings and Projects 1979-1994.”
2006
“0 To 9: The Complete Magazine 1967-1969” by Vito Acconci and Bernadette Mayer.
Artist Bibliography
2009
Ballentine, Sandra, Everything Must Go, T Magazine, June 2009
Ken Johnson, Art in Review, New York Times, April 24, 2009
2008
Nickas, Bob, Top Ten (Year In Review), Artforum, December.
Editorial Bibliography (Selected)
2010
O’Neill-Butler, Lauren, “Paint it Black,” Bookforum.com, May.
Latocha, Kris, “Art Book of the Month: Avalanche,” Dazed and Confused, April.
Fox, Dan, “XXX Macarena,” Frieze, April.
Quaytman, R.H., “Rock/Music Writings by Dan Graham,” Bomb, Spring Issue.
Velasco, David, “White Columns Annual,” Artforum, February.
2009
Saltz, Jerry, “The Secret Biennial,” New York Magazine, December 7.
Schwendener, Martha, “Rock/Music Writings by Dan Graham,” BookForum, Fall Issue.
Pouncy, Edwin, “Rock/Music Writings by Dan Graham,” WIRE, October.
Johnson, Ken, “Art in Review,” April.
Kotz, Liz, “Open Source,” Artforum, March.
Hanson, Sarah, “How To Make Happenings Happen,” ARTnews, January.
2008
Pouncey, Edwin, “Allan Kaprow: How To Make A Happening,” WIRE, December.
Krukowski, Damon, “Music Top Ten,” Artforum, December.
Ed., “Consumed: How to Make a Happening,” ArtReview, November.
Johnson, Ken, “Will the Revolution be Museumized? Will There Be a Revolution?,” The New York Times, July 25.
Frank, Peter, “Great Bear Pamphlet Series,” Art on Paper, March/April.
Mobilio, Albert, “Great Bear,” Bookforum, February/March.
2007
Perloff, Marjorie, “Vito Acconci- Conceptual Poetry: Old and New,” Parkett, Issue 78.
Sanders, Jay, “In View: 0 to 9,” Modern Painters, September.
Finch, Elizabeth, “Reviews: 0 to 9,” Art on Paper, September.
Cotter, Holland, “A Beehive Filled With Artists’ Books and Buzz,” The New York Times, November 18.
Iles, Chrissie, “Top Ten,” Artforum, December, 2007.
Licht, Alan, “0 to 9 The Complete Magazine: 1967-1969” ArtReview, January.
James Hoff
Born 1975 in Fort Wayne, Indiana.
Education
1998
Indiana University, BA in Political Science/Economics.
Selected Group Exhibitions
2010
“Pig Latin,” Nice & Fit Gallery, Berlin, Germany.
“Mapping the Studio,” Bastard, Oslo, Norway.
2009
“Indian Ocean,” Dispatch Bureau, NY, NY.
“Everything Must Go,” Asian Song Society, NY NY.
2008
“Black Friday,” Printed Matter, NY, NY.
“Artist-Initiated Magazines,” Rekord, Oslo, Norway.
“Psychotic Reactions,” KS Art, NY, NY.
“That Was Then . . . This Is Now,” PS1, NY, NY.
Selected Performances
2010
“Inventory Arousal,” Nova Scotia College of Art and Design, March 5.
“Inventory Arousal,” Pompidou, Paris, France, January 27.
“Inventory Arousal,” Sorbonne, Paris, France, January 27.
2009
“How Wheeling Feels When the Ground Walks Away,” Artists Space, NY, NY. November 17 - 22.
“Inventory Arousal,” Academy of Art, Oslo, Norway, November 2-4.
2008
“Inventory Arousal,” Ronnells/OEI Reading Series, Stockholm, Sweden, December 5.
“Inventory Arousal,” École Normale Supérieure Lettres et Sciences Humaines, Lyon, France, February 13.
“Inventory Arousal,” Academy of Art, Oslo, Norway, February 11.
2006
“Four Walls and a Window,” Elizabeth Center for the Arts, NY, NY.
“Airport War,” New Museum, NY, NY.
Selected Publications/Editions
2010
“Inventory Arousal” (Bedford Press), artist book, forthcoming.
2009
“Memoirs” (No Input Books), artist book.
2008
“Endless Namelesss” (No Input Books), artist book.
“Topten” (No Input Books), artist book.
“In Dreams Begin Responsibility” (AW Records), LP.
“Wavelength,” artist book.
2007
“Wedding Album” (Collaboration with the New Humans/AW Records), LP.
“Live at New Museum” (AW Records), CD.
“Airport War/Religious Knives,” CD.
2006
“Wall As Mistress” (AW Records), LP.
2005
“Over and Over the Endless Corner” (AW Records), 16 record album.
Selected Talks & Readings
2010
Confounding Expectations XI, New School for Social Research, NY, NY, April 08.
CAA, Chicago, IL, February 13.
2009
Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, MN, February, 5.
2008
St. Marks Poetry Project, New York, January 14.
Selected Writings
2010
“Significant Other,” Parkett, Forthcoming
“Get It In Writing,” OEI, (Stockholm, Sweden), Winter Edition.
2009
“Sweet Sweat,” ArtForum, December.“
In Which End Meets End,” Éditions Loevenbruck, (Paris, France).
2008
“Introduction to 0 To 9,” OEI, (Stockholm, Sweden), Fall Edition.
Publications: Editor and/or Publisher
2010
“Avalanche” edited by Willoughby Sharp and Liza Béar.
“Notebooks 1967-1970” by Lee Lozano (Facsimile Edition).
“XXX Macarena” by Tony Conrad/Jutta Koether/John Miller.
2009
“It Makes Me Wonder What Is Next For Her and For The Economy,” (White Columns)
“Rock/Music Writings” by Dan Graham.
“The Complete Edition of Newsletters” by Something Else Press by Dick Higgins (Facsimile Edition).
“DISBAND” by DISBAND.
2008
“Documents” by Art Workers’ Coalition (Facsimile Edition).
“Open Hearing” by Art Workers’ Coalition (Facsimile Edition).
“How to Make a Happening” by Allan Kaprow.
“Great Bear Pamphlets” (Facsimile Edition).
2007
“Coffee Coffee” by Aram Saroyan.
“The Complete Minimal Poems” by Aram Saroyan.
“Real Life Magazine: Selected Writings and Projects 1979-1994.”
2006
“0 To 9: The Complete Magazine 1967-1969” by Vito Acconci and Bernadette Mayer.
Artist Bibliography
2009
Ballentine, Sandra, Everything Must Go, T Magazine, June 2009
Ken Johnson, Art in Review, New York Times, April 24, 2009
2008
Nickas, Bob, Top Ten (Year In Review), Artforum, December.
Editorial Bibliography (Selected)
2010
O’Neill-Butler, Lauren, “Paint it Black,” Bookforum.com, May.
Latocha, Kris, “Art Book of the Month: Avalanche,” Dazed and Confused, April.
Fox, Dan, “XXX Macarena,” Frieze, April.
Quaytman, R.H., “Rock/Music Writings by Dan Graham,” Bomb, Spring Issue.
Velasco, David, “White Columns Annual,” Artforum, February.
2009
Saltz, Jerry, “The Secret Biennial,” New York Magazine, December 7.
Schwendener, Martha, “Rock/Music Writings by Dan Graham,” BookForum, Fall Issue.
Pouncy, Edwin, “Rock/Music Writings by Dan Graham,” WIRE, October.
Johnson, Ken, “Art in Review,” April.
Kotz, Liz, “Open Source,” Artforum, March.
Hanson, Sarah, “How To Make Happenings Happen,” ARTnews, January.
2008
Pouncey, Edwin, “Allan Kaprow: How To Make A Happening,” WIRE, December.
Krukowski, Damon, “Music Top Ten,” Artforum, December.
Ed., “Consumed: How to Make a Happening,” ArtReview, November.
Johnson, Ken, “Will the Revolution be Museumized? Will There Be a Revolution?,” The New York Times, July 25.
Frank, Peter, “Great Bear Pamphlet Series,” Art on Paper, March/April.
Mobilio, Albert, “Great Bear,” Bookforum, February/March.
2007
Perloff, Marjorie, “Vito Acconci- Conceptual Poetry: Old and New,” Parkett, Issue 78.
Sanders, Jay, “In View: 0 to 9,” Modern Painters, September.
Finch, Elizabeth, “Reviews: 0 to 9,” Art on Paper, September.
Cotter, Holland, “A Beehive Filled With Artists’ Books and Buzz,” The New York Times, November 18.
Iles, Chrissie, “Top Ten,” Artforum, December, 2007.
Licht, Alan, “0 to 9 The Complete Magazine: 1967-1969” ArtReview, January.
Pig Latin, Untitled #32010
Acryllic on Gesso
Diptych, 24” x 12” (12” x 12”)
Pig Latin, Untitled #42010
Acryllic on Gesso
Diptych, 24” x 12” (12” x 12”)
Pig Latin, Untitled #12010
Acryllic on Gesso
12” x 12”
How Wheeling Feels When the Ground Walks Away2009
Poster
Offset Print
25" x 37"
Edition of 500
How Wheeling Feels When the Ground Walks Away2009
Photodocumentation of Performance
How Wheeling Feels When the Ground Walks Away2009
Ephemera, Written Score
8.5” x 11”
Topten2008
Publication, Cover Detail
Edition of 200
Topten2008
Publication, Spread Detail
Edition of 200
5" x 7"
Inventory Arousal2008
Ephemera, Written Score
8.5” x 11”