Andy Hope 1930 is a German artist who combines conceptualism with a radically representational practice. He draws the universe of the imagination using a vast range of media, and extending the realm of the pictorial from flat image to relief, sculpture, installation and meta-installation. His art takes equally from real and fictional subjects, dissolving the difference between the two so as to create a phantasmagoria that is rooted in collective culture.

Signature

Since 1998 most of the artist's works are signed ‘Andy Hope 1930’ (although at that time the artist was still named Andreas Hofer). The signature points to a pivotal year in history when the utopian aspirations of the modern movement gave way to darker forces within Europe, pausing the clock at a time when the destiny of the world hung in balance. The Americanism of the name recalls Andy Warhol

Andy Warhol

Andrew Warhola , known as Andy Warhol, was an American painter, printmaker, and filmmaker who was a leading figure in the visual art movement known as pop art...

, whilst allying this with spiritual optimism. A persona or Alter Ego, Andy Hope stands between the artist and his work, camouflaging his intentions as it multiplies the scope of his invention. Since 2010 the artist uses this conflicting sign for his own name.

Style

Hope's style is instantly recognisable; an intentionally non-arty mode of representation that borrows from Thriftstore painting, comic books and science fiction illustration, mixing these elements with extreme artistic positions such as those of Kasimir Malevich, James Ensor

James Ensor

James Sidney Edouard, Baron Ensor was a Flemish-Belgian painter and printmaker, an important influence on expressionism and surrealism who lived in Ostend for almost his entire life...

, Marcel Duchamp

Marcel Duchamp

Marcel Duchamp was a French artist whose work is most often associated with the Dadaist and Surrealist movements. Considered by some to be one of the most important artists of the 20th century, Duchamp's output influenced the development of post-World War I Western art...

 and Paul Klee

Paul Klee

Paul Klee was born in Münchenbuchsee, Switzerland, and is considered both a German and a Swiss painter. His highly individual style was influenced by movements in art that included expressionism, cubism, and surrealism. He was, as well, a student of orientalism...

. It plays with a messy or childlike “hand” and exaggerates a painterly gesture, involving the uncontrolled dripping of pigment, a simplification of motifs and alla prima brush stroke. He creates over-paintings, collages and cut-outs: using pencils, coloured pencils and felt-tip pens, oil, enamel, and acrylic, on such supports as cardboard, paper, canvas, recycled materials and hand-made tapestries. He also makes films and sculptures, and text too plays a major role in his works, inscribing his imagery with energetic statement. His subject matter defies definition, encompassing such anachronistic and fantastical phenomenon as superheroes, dinosaurs, devils, spaceships and historical villains. It refuses any hierarchy, instead giving free rein to the iconography of mass media, science fiction and out-of-fashion painting to describe what the critic Noemi Smolik writing for Artforum has described as ‘the realm of pop icons, of dreams and nightmares, of imagination itself.’

Junk Shop

In 1996, Andy Hope moved the contents of the Munich thrift store Puschmann to an art space where they were assembled for sale together with works from a number of other artists. Paintings and drawings by Andy Hope depicting landscapes and replicating famous works by Kazimir Malevich were stuck on top of patterned wallpaper, forming an interconnecting montage in which lines flowed from one image into another and subject matter assumed the importance of signs. By positioning his work amidst junk and adopting the subjects of older artworks, Hope broke with many of the conditions that safeguard contemporary art, disregarding the progression of art history and its logic. ‘c/o Puschmann’, Hope’s first exhibition, is returned to again and again in his art; a place of beginning that pointed backwards and beyond the accepted boundaries of high art.

Superheroes

Hope’s oeuvre is populated by superheroes from the Golden and Silver Age of Comics — Flash Gordon

Flash Gordon

Flash Gordon is the hero of a science fiction adventure comic strip originally drawn by Alex Raymond. First published January 7, 1934, the strip was inspired by and created to compete with the already established Buck Rogers adventure strip. Also inspired by these series were comics such as Dash...

, Batman

Batman

Batman is a fictional character created by the artist Bob Kane and writer Bill Finger. A comic book superhero, Batman first appeared in Detective Comics #27 , and since then has appeared primarily in publications by DC Comics...

, Superman

Superman

Superman is a fictional comic book superhero appearing in publications by DC Comics, widely considered to be an American cultural icon. Created by American writer Jerry Siegel and Canadian-born American artist Joe Shuster in 1932 while both were living in Cleveland, Ohio, and sold to Detective...

, and Wonder Woman

Wonder Woman

Wonder Woman is a DC Comics superheroine created by William Moulton Marston. She first appeared in All Star Comics #8 . The Wonder Woman title has been published by DC Comics almost continuously except for a brief hiatus in 1986....

— and such futuristic objects as spaceships, laser beams and fantastic uniforms. A series of works focusing on Flash Gordon was followed by the exhibition ‘Batman Gallery’, 2004, which physically created a fictional space, and the continuing suggestion of superpowers in his works. Illusion is posited as meaning, allowing the warped time and space experienced in comics to permeate his art.

Phantoms

Time is upended in Andy Hope's art, which simultaneously blends pasts, present and future. Exhibitions such as Sweet Troubled Souls, 2007, Phantom Gallery, 2008, which took place simultaneously in Zürich and Los Angeles, and ‘Air tsu dni oui sélavy], 2009, employ traces of fictitious pasts and spectral doubles. Hope frequently paints over the top of already painted canvases, sometimes allowing parts of the earlier picture to remain visible so that their ghostly presences haunt his images. Conversely, other works are cut into, removing the vital features such as eyes or whole faces, as though extracting their personalities.

Exhibitions / Labyrinthine Infinity

The overlapping times and spaces witnessed in his works conjure what Hope has referred to as Labyrinthine Infinity. Subjects are cut loose from history and are free to communicate with those of other works, forming narratives that are ambiguous and fluid. Individual works are elements within larger installations, which are liable to be re-grouped and multiplied by the artist, creating endless permutations of meaning. Almost all of Hopes exhibitions create a certain atmosphere, setting the single works within a scenic installation and fusing the conditions of the space and the works into a telling unity.

Selected solo exhibitions

2011

Robin Dostoyevsky by Andy Hope 1930, Centro de Arte Contemporaneo, Malaga, Spain

0,10 and a half by Andy Hope 1930, Galerie Guido W. Baudach, Berlin, Germany

2010

Andy Hope 1930 at the Freud, The Freud Museum, London, England

Charles Riva Collection, Brussels, Belgium

ON TIME, Metro Pictures, New York NY

2009

White Space Black, Oldenburger Kunstverein, Oldenburg, Germany

Andy Hope 1930, Goetz Collection, Munich, Germany

air tsu dni oui sélavy, Hauser & Wirth London, England

Andy Hope 1930, Sammlung Goetz, Munich, Germany

2008

Valleys of Neptune, Galerie Christine Mayer, Munich, Germany

Phantom Gallery, Hauser & Wirth Zürich and 7556 Sunset Blvd., Los Angeles CA

City of Sokrates, Galerie Guido W. Baudach, Berlin, Germany

2007

The Long Tomorrow, MARTa Herford, Herford, Germany

Sweet Troubled Souls, Silverbridge and Hauser & Wirth, private apartment Yola Noujam, Paris, France

Only Gods could survive, Metro Pictures, New York NY

2006

Trans Time, Galerie Guido W. Baudach, Berlin, Germany

This Island Earth, Hauser & Wirth London, England

2005

Welt ohne Ende, Städtische Galerie im Lenbachhaus, Munich, Germany

Galassia che vai, Galerie Bleich-Rossi, Vienna, Austria

Neverworld Technik, Kunstverein Ulm, Ulm, Germany (with André Butzer)

2004

Batman Gallery, Galerie Christine Mayer, Munich, Germany

2002

Hinter den Hügeln, Galerie Christine Mayer, Munich, Germany

1996

c/o Puschmann, Ausstellungsraum Balenstrasse, Munich, Germany

Selected group exhibitions

2011

Der Traum vom Fliegen - The Art of Flying, Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin, Germany

2010

Was tun? Was geschieht?, Sammlung Rheingold, Düsseldorf, Germany

Born in Dystopia, Rosenblum Collection & Friends, Paris, France

Permanent Trouble. Kunst aus der Sammlung Kopp, München / Art from the Kopp Collection, Munich, Kunstforum Ostdeutsche Galerie, Regensburg, Germany

"I really don't know what art is". Insights into a private collection, MARTa Herford, Herford, Germany

Real Presences. Marcel Broodthaers today, Kunsthalle Düsseldorf, Germany

If not in this period of time. Contemporary German Painting 1989 - 2010, MASP Museu de Arte de São Paulo, São Paulo, Brasil

2009

MAN SON 1969. The Horror of the Situation, Hamburger Kunsthalle, Hamburg, Germany

amor fati, Galerie Guido W. Baudach, Berlin, Germany

2008

Vertrautes Terrain - Contemporary Art in / about Germany, ZKM - Zentrum für Kunst und Medientechnologie, Karlsruhe, Germany

Back to Black. Black in current painting, Kestner Gesellschaft, Hanover, Germany

Ad Absurdum. Energies of the Absurd from Modernism till Today, MARTa Herford, Herford, Germany

2007

Paul Thek. Werkschau im Kontext zeitgenössischer Kunst, Karlsruhe, Germany

Perspektive 07, Städtische Galerie im Lenbachhaus und Kunstbau, Munich, Germany

Euro-Centric, Part 1: New European Art from the Rubell Family Collection, Rubell Family Collection, Miami FL

Made in Germany, Kestner Gesellschaft, Sprengel Museum, Kunstverein Hannover, Hanover, Germany

There is never a stop and never a finish - In Memoriam Jason Rhoades, Hamburger Bahnhof, Berlin, Germany

2005

Schwarz, Brot, Gold, Oldenburger Kunstverein, Oldenburg, Germany

Goetz meets Falckenberg, Sammlung Falckenberg / Phoenix Kunststiftung, Hamburg, Germany

Les Grands Spectacles, Museum der Moderne, Salzburg, Austria

2004

Direkte Malerei / Direct Painting, Kunsthalle Mannheim, Mannheim, Germany

Heimweh: Young German Art, Haunch of Venison, London, England

2003

Actionbutton, Hamburger Bahnhof, Berlin, Germany

Deutschemalereizweitausenddrei, Frankfurter Kunstverein, Frankfurt, Germany

2001

Viva November, Städtische Galerie Wolfsburg, Wolfsburg, Germany

External links

• Artfacts
• Hauser & Wirth
• Kunstaspekte
• Artnet
• Guido W. Baudach
• Galerie Christine Mayer
• Metro Pictures