Andreas Hofer: This Island Earth

The disturbing and challenging imagery in this Berlin-based artist's work is pulled from history, art history and popular culture. He makes it his own in a variety of mediums, including painting, sculpture, drawing, collage and installation. Subjects include the symbols of the Third Reich, comic book heroes and science fiction scenes, a complex and diverse system of signs, removed from the popular lexicon and distorted to present provocative and subversive parallels. He is particularly inspired by the 1930s, the decade that witnessed Germany's transition from the Weimar Republic to National Socialism, from democracy to totalitarianism, but was also marked by the development of film as a powerful new tool of mass communication. He confronts the visual language of Fascism with signs of Modernism, with comic strips and film, in order to interrogate its charismatic power and superficiality. This Island Earth includes color reproductions of numerous new works, including a 36-foot-long painting, as well as smaller paintings, drawings, collage works, sculptures and banners.