Kurt Hoffman “Hungarian Flashcards”

Studio 10

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Studio 10 presents recent work by Kurt Hoffman, from his ongoing ‘Hungarian Flashcards’ series. Taking the form of illustrated vocabulary flashcards, each offers a Hungarian word or phrase to learn, accompanied by its English translation. The words are unfolded to reveal the worlds inside them — flowers and animals, allegories, social foibles, eros and intimations of mortality. Many of the works are in fact flash card sized — 5x7” and rendered in watercolors in tones ranging from sullen grays and blues to jewellike efflorences. Others are larger, painted in watercolor and oil painting, often with a distinctly expressionist style possibly, but not necessarily, having anything to do with Hungary.

Says Hoffman, “I started learning Hungarian a few years ago. It has a startlingly different way of putting words together and an utterly foreign vocabulary. I’d read that adding images to one’s vocabulary flashcards was helpful for retaining new words, so I began creating hundreds of these cards. They became a way of discovering not only words, but whatever was on my mind, with a Hungarian word as a sort of random prompt, a toss of the I Ching. I started realizing the vastness of language, the way it has to express everything that is ever spoken about anything. It was a fertile subject.”

Kurt Hoffman (b. 1957) is a multi-disciplinary artist who lives in New York City. His ink drawings and paintings have been shown at the Valentine Gallery and the Ludwig Museum, Cologne. His exploration of the French language is expressed with the group Les Chauds Lapins, for whom he writes original arrangements of French songs from the early 20th Century. His collaboration with artist Michael Ballou, ‘The Honorable Discharge,’ presented his erotic fiction and chamber music in evening-length performances at Four Walls, Brooklyn and at the Elizabeth Foundation, NYC.