Keywords

Ice, sculpture, art, time, self actualization, heat, gravity, natural processes, buddhism, freezer, water, transformation, temporality, ephemeral, receptual, disintegration, decomposition, buddha head, minimalism

Abstract

Contained herein is a close examination of self-awareness and self-portraiture as it applies to the works of artist Jeffrey Hoffman. Water, frozen into various forms and combined with natural elements of wood, slowly melt over an indeterminable amount of time, each droplet documented as the process transforms the elements. Through this process, we see change. We see time. We see truth. This documentation of change and time through natural elements is where the artwork comes full circle. Working with new media to explore man's interconnectivity to life, energy, and the cosmos, he produces time based installations, photographs, videos, and sculptures that serve as both existential metaphors and Tantric symbols. With the use of digital cameras and video, a record is created by which the disintegration which occurs from the unseen forces of gravity, heat and time upon sculptures made from natural elements and ice is examined. In its sculptural form, his work can be categorized as Installation art and Performance art due to its evolving nature. Each piece is intended to either change over time or to have that change halted by another temporal force like that of flowing electricity. The possibility of allowing varying levels of self-awareness to emerge through self portraiture is also examined. The existential, as well as the metaphysical, can be present in a physical form when the form is imbued with evidence of an evolutionary process. In many ways, the work serves as a self portrait. It is a means for Hoffman to examine his own existentialism as a student of the modern western world and life.

Notes

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Graduation Date

2012

Semester

Spring

Advisor

Isenhour, David

Degree

Master of Fine Arts (M.F.A.)

College

College of Arts and Humanities

Department

Visual Arts and Design

Degree Program

Emerging Media; Studio Art and the Computer

Format

application/pdf

Identifier

CFE0004242

URL

http://purl.fcla.edu/fcla/etd/CFE0004242

Language

English

Release Date

May 2012

Length of Campus-only Access

None

Access Status

Masters Thesis (Open Access)

Subjects

Arts and Humanities -- Dissertations, Academic, Dissertations, Academic -- Arts and Humanities

Included in

Sculpture Commons

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