Alekos Hofstetter – Tannhäuser Tor II

The catalog “Tannhäuser Tor II” (Tannhauser Gate II), edited by Daniel H. Wild, documents the development of the work cycle of the same name begun by the artists Alekos Hofstetter and Florian Göpfert in 2012. Conceptually, it follows the first catalog on this topic, which was published in 2013, also by FANTÔME.
The theme of the group of works titled “Tannhäuser Tor” is the relationship between space, time, and distance; and the focus is on examining the changing perspectives on post-war modernism and its architecture. The disappearance of modernism from our surroundings has consequences. Through this disappearance, modernism’s former utopian promise, or rather, the memory that is left of this promise, is dissolving. In the drawings and paintings, some of which were created together with Dresden artist Florian Göpfert, a new relationship between architecture and landscape is constructed. And in this very construction of a utopian context, or a “new home,” a distance becomes visible. The architecture that Alekos Hofstetter shows us in his works is freed from any functionality and seems to be able to exist only in a remote realm.