Drift | Jeanne Hoffman

“Drift” is both verb and noun, both continuous movement and accumulated object. It speaks of the tension between motion and stillness inherent in assemblage – the process or movement of being formed, of “becoming”, which inhabits – though nomadically – the spaces and relationships between discrete elements of the work. In "becoming", one piece is drawn into the territory of another, changing its value as an element and bringing about an unexpected unity. The life of the work itself is in the “intermezzo” (Deleuze).

“Drift” is also the literal translation of the French “dérive" – Guy-Debord’s psychogeographical concept describing an unplanned journey, where one allows oneself to be drawn (both consciously and not) through a landscape, through disparate environments, by various geographical attractions and influences.

Hoffman’s ceramic objects function like co-ordinates on this landscape, legible references pointing to relational meaning as yet unarticulated. The materiality of the clay – its plasticity and solidity – carries her conceptual concerns, the interdependent dualities of becoming/disintegrating, space/place and room/object. These considerations are similarly described in the irregular edges of paintings, which interrogate the limits of the object and the room/object border.

Drift is ultimately a notion and gesture that invites both artist and viewer to travel within the space, between works, enabling a re-view of one’s position – emotionally, socially, politically –within a particular geographical locality.