Bonheur automatique

A book is a book is a book

The life of Basel-based artist Hanspeter Hofmann (*1960) seems to be a romantic artist’s biography: trained as a natural scientist, he turned to quasi-alchemical experimentations as processes of form-finding, and to printing techniques for grounding his pictorial work.

Seen from an another angle, Hofmann also refers to the visual clichés of the consumer culture industry as they are represented in mass media, and recontextualizes its icons at the profit of an artwork’s aura.

“Bonheur automatique” makes this contiguity of meaning and work in Hofmann’s artistic strategy evident. Both an artist’s book and a catalogue raisonné of his prints, the publication on the one hand recreates on the offset plates the construction of images in his works and, on the other hand, documents the development of bodies of works and themes.

Published with the Kunsthaus Graz and the Villa Arson, Nice.

Awarded in the competition “The most beautiful Swiss books 2007.”