Ruan Hoffmann enjoyed an extremely fruitfull and creative period at our studio.

An artist by trade,Ruan Hoffmann has turned to working with ceramics over the past 14 years. He uses the three-dimensional surfaces of plates, bowls, tile panels and small sculptures as canvasses for his icon-like images. His art is often infused with personal concerns about identity and sexuality.

Ceramics' popularly thought of status as a craft - rather than a contemporary form of art production - is an issue Hoffmann eagerly subverts. By focusing on the medium's fragility, combined with a discriminating eye for detail and painstaking craftmanship, the artist finds a sympathetic vehicle for expressing concerns that span both the present and the past.

Unlike some other art forms, ceramic art often forces the artist to negotiate with the build-in idiosyncrasies of the medium. Casual and accidental elements frequently interrupt the process and induce surpricing end results. These spontaneous mishaps are part and parcel of the material properties of the ceramic medium itself, which is profoundly attached to the earth and its unpredictable processes.