The Jamileh Weber gallery is delighted, to present an exhibition titled Fosbury Flop with new works by Hanspeter Hofmann. The paintings by Hanspeter Hofmann are often related to his background as a chemical researcher: his use of forms and lines reminds one of microscopic enlargements, organically grown cell structures. He refers to a basic formal vocabulary that he developed 1992/93 in a series of woodcuts titled "In Vitro". Since then he conceptually varies these forms and lines in an ongoing transformation: zooming in and out, select, superimpose. Every found picture, every detail can become the starting point for new pictures. His use of a provoke range of colors, now and then using oscillating interference colors, mother-of-pearl gleam and neon, sometimes reach the edge of the retinal capacity. "Hanspeter Hofmann is not a violent painter, not a person who expresses his subjective sensibilities on the canvas in emotional outbursts. On the contrary, the pictorial quality that he generates is derived from calculations that are as careful as they are playful." (Claudia Spinelli) In a new development the artist started to apply stick-on words, skulls, birds and snakes on the canvases. This creates a conscious distortion, diverts from pure painting, provokes the alert eye and treats ironically the artist's creative urge at the same time. In this sense the exhibition title Fosbury Flop* can be read as an empty word as well as conceptual: Backwards over the bar, the unusual way from abstraction to figuration. * Fosbury Flop: high jump technique, named after the American high jumper Richard ('Dick') Fosbury (*1947), where the athlete sprints diagonally towards the bar, then curve and leap backwards over the bar. Hanspeter Hofmann born 1960 in Mitlödi, Kanton Glarus, lives and works in Basel. Selected Solo Exhibitions: "Stoked" 2004 Kunstverein Freiburg i.Br., "Supercritical Fluids" 2003 Kunsthaus Glarus, 2001 Kunsthalle Basel (with Vera Lutter), 2001 Villa Merkel, Galerien der Stadt Esslingen (with Thomas Rentmeister), 2000 Galerie Mezzanin, Vienna; Galerie Walcheturm, Zurich The show will remain on view through Saturday, April 24, 2004 at the Jamileh Weber Gallery, Waldmannstrasse 6, CH-8001 Zurich. Hours: Tuesday through Friday, 11am to 6pm, Saturday 10am to 4pm and by appointment. For further information or photographs please contact the gallery, phone: +41-1-252 10 66, fax: +41-1-252 11 32 email: info@jamilehweber.com, www.jamilehweber.com