Image: DIE GALERIE, Frankfurt am Main
DIE GALERIE in Frankfurt am Main has turned its spotlight series toward Frank Hoffmann, presenting him as the youngest artist in its group exhibition ‘Ostdeutsche Kunstlandschaften’. In a recent email to friends of the gallery, the program was described as the final chapter of the spotlight sequence devoted to the show, and the gallery said Hoffmann’s work can be seen there until 9 September 2026.
The exhibition ‘Ostdeutsche Kunstlandschaften’ runs at DIE GALERIE from 22 April to 9 September 2026 and gathers work by Gerhard Altenbourg, Beate Debus, Ellen Fuhr, Hubertus Giebe, Clemens Gröszer, Johannes Heisig, Frank Hoffmann, Evelyn Richter, Volker Stelzmann, Lars Wiedemann, Doris Ziegler and Klaus Zylla. The gallery frames the show as a walk through eastern German art landscapes, ranging from Brandenburg and Berlin to Leipzig and Dresden, and brings together painting, photography and sculpture across a broad historical span.
Hoffmann, born in Görlitz in 1972, is identified by the gallery as the only abstract position in the exhibition. DIE GALERIE describes his paintings as evoking pictorially dissolved landscapes and the feeling of blurred memories, in which details disappear into a sea of colour and form. In some works, the gallery adds, figuration remains visible and merges with abstraction.
The online exhibition page places Hoffmann among artists whose approaches anchor the wider curatorial structure of the show. Around figures such as Volker Stelzmann, Johannes Heisig, Klaus Zylla and Beate Debus, the gallery proposes a spatial and temporal arc that links established names with different generations and media. Within that framework, Hoffmann’s work is presented as one that deconstructs art history into a state of visual uncertainty, described by the gallery as drifting into abstract mist.
The artist’s biography on the gallery email notes that Hoffmann studied art and Germanistics in Dresden from 1991 to 1997, with an Erasmus stipend in Copenhagen in 1994/95. From 1999 to 2009 he held a teaching post at the Institute for Art and Musicology at the Technical University of Dresden. Alongside painting and graphic work, he also made several animated short films, and since the 2000s has devoted himself more intensively to painting. He lives and works in Dresden.
The gallery’s text on Hoffmann’s practice says he examines the tension between personal perception and art-historical image traditions, especially Romanticism. It characterises his method through the idea of ‘romantic irony’, in which what is seen is questioned, deconstructed and destroyed before being recreated as a new reality. That process is said to produce paintings that still suggest romantic image principles through colour, light, perspective and mood.
Works by Hoffmann included in the exhibition page are ‘subtitle 2_8’ (2021), ‘subtitle 2_12’ (2022), ‘subtitle 2_15’ (2022), ‘subtitle 2_20’ (2023), ‘subtitle 3_1’ (2023) and ‘subtitle 3_6’ (2024/25). The gallery lists their media and sizes, including oil on canvas and oil with masking film on canvas, among them the large-format ‘subtitle 3_6’ at 155 x 200 cm. DIE GALERIE’s opening hours are Monday to Friday, 9 am to 6 pm, and Saturday, 10 am to 2 pm.
