Amrei Hofstatter aka Vertico's Puppets lives in Berlin since 2007, works as a freelance graphic designer, illustrates and writes for the spanish art and design magazine Belio. Her last exhibition held place at Gallery Box32 this Oktober, which has also included a clothing collection with her designs.
Her digitally created works are abstract and geometric hallucinations of a world in which mostly female characters merge with shapes and objects inspired by classic origami. This results in the creation of surreal hybrids, who’s existential sense seems to consist of nothing other than their entire and absolute unfolding and abstraction. Far Eastern aesthetics, ritual, magic and quasi esoteric-religious symbolism and iconography confront the viewer with a complex and not always easily decipherable theme. At first glance one enters an idyllic, almost childlike scenario, only to encounter topics such as pain, trauma and self-mutilation, which ultimately always converge into a unique existential problem: the desire for transformation in comparison with the fear of failure, the total disappearance and extinction. Thereby Amrei sees herself heavily influenced by the Freudian psychoanalysis and the existence of the "uncanny", a concept that nowadays finds its use in Cybernetics as the "Uncanny Valley Effect". This condition describes the extremely rejecting reaction of a human towards an artificial creature, exactly the moment when the line between artificial and human has been crossed.
"I want to deliver my audience to a similar feeling," she says, “when my works stop just being “me” and starts being “them”, when suddenly a very interesting moment begins in which they find something hitherto suppressed in themselves. This may be a memory, the hint of a feeling, an instinctive desire. In any case, viewers should not think about me, but about themselves. Roles of gender should become blurred, the stereotypical use of "feminine" colors is nothing other than a red herring. I do not like cliches. I like to surprise the viewer, to show him that things are not always what they seem to be at first glance. "
Her digitally created works are abstract and geometric hallucinations of a world in which mostly female characters merge with shapes and objects inspired by classic origami. This results in the creation of surreal hybrids, who’s existential sense seems to consist of nothing other than their entire and absolute unfolding and abstraction. Far Eastern aesthetics, ritual, magic and quasi esoteric-religious symbolism and iconography confront the viewer with a complex and not always easily decipherable theme. At first glance one enters an idyllic, almost childlike scenario, only to encounter topics such as pain, trauma and self-mutilation, which ultimately always converge into a unique existential problem: the desire for transformation in comparison with the fear of failure, the total disappearance and extinction. Thereby Amrei sees herself heavily influenced by the Freudian psychoanalysis and the existence of the "uncanny", a concept that nowadays finds its use in Cybernetics as the "Uncanny Valley Effect". This condition describes the extremely rejecting reaction of a human towards an artificial creature, exactly the moment when the line between artificial and human has been crossed.
"I want to deliver my audience to a similar feeling," she says, “when my works stop just being “me” and starts being “them”, when suddenly a very interesting moment begins in which they find something hitherto suppressed in themselves. This may be a memory, the hint of a feeling, an instinctive desire. In any case, viewers should not think about me, but about themselves. Roles of gender should become blurred, the stereotypical use of "feminine" colors is nothing other than a red herring. I do not like cliches. I like to surprise the viewer, to show him that things are not always what they seem to be at first glance. "
