Hannes Hofstetter, "Brave New World II", 1994
mixed media on canvas, 270 x 300 cm (6x135x100cm)
Hand ax, spear, bow and arrow, digging stick, hoe, plow, ax, wheel, fishhook, harpoon, net, dugout, paddle, rudder, ladle irrigation, baler, hammer, anvil, pincers, furnace, spindle, loom, potter's wheel, rotary mill, Bow drill, lever, pulley, spiral of Archimedes, Heronsball, mine, elevator, watermill, mine drainage, hammer mill, dyeing, sawmill, wind turbine, wire drawing, printing press, metal casting, ore smelting, cutting machine, lathe, parachute, Leupold's steam engine, Huygens' principle, Microscope, telescope, pendulum clock, Papin's machine, parallelogram of forces, Leyden bottle, threshing machine, Saver steam pump, hot air balloon, Watt steam engine, Jenny spinning machine, jacquard loom, steam locomotive, McCormickreaper, generator, steamship, electric field, magnetic field, telegraph, propeller, chiller, gasoline engine , Bessemer pear, Pelton turbine, Distillation, Gliding, Automotive, Parsonturbine, Electromagnetic Waves, Radio tubes, Custom tube, Hollerith, X-ray tube, Gramophone, Motor flight, Light bulb, Blast furnace, Atomic model, Kaplan turbine, Microphone, Loudspeaker, VanDeGraff generator, Cyclotron, Geiger-Müller counter tube, Magnetic and electrostatic electron microscope, Gear transmission, Cam gears, Maltese cross gear, Electric lens , Cascade generator, turbine engine, hydrocarbon molecule, magnetic clay, atomic fission, chain reaction, four-roll bending machine, automatic manufacturing technology, hydraulic machine, tokamak accelerator, radio transmitter, sputnik, rocket, communication satellite, Wankel engine, hydrogen spectrum, nuclear power plant, atomic bonds, double helix, DNA, high-frequency accelerator, synchronous equipment, spectrometer, Planar Transistor, Integrated Circuit, Diode Transistor Logic Circuits: Conjunction (AND) Negated AND (NAND) Distinction (OR) Negated ORT (NOR) Equivalence (Exclusive NOR) Activate (Exclusive OR), Half adder mt AND une s Exclusive OR, half-adder with NAND, fully-added: wait table, structure Symbol BCD 7 Segment: Display wait table RS flip-flop: circuit pulse program, switching symbol Masterslave flip-flop,: logic image and internal circuit, pulse diagram (MOS circuit), memory cell one bipolar read-write memory (RAM), Symbols of NPN transistor N-channel SFET, p-channel SFET, controllable electronic device primitive circuits, digital switching element 7430, indiffusion, base diffusion, aluminum pathways, 4-bit addition, fundamental electron photonvertex, genetic engineering recombination DNA
Brave New World
After all, Hofstetter had already begun studies for the "Schöne neue Welt" cycle in 1992. For the artist, the new world is "schön", beautiful, to say that things have been made and are being done for which life is a complicated and contradictory positive adventure. He takes up the title of the novel "New World" (1932) by Aldous Huxley in which there is a harsh critique of the society dominated by technology. Hofstetter does not have a blind faith in technique (and Adorno's thought holds true), but he knows that negativity is renunciation, a one-sidedness that excludes from a great variety of "beautiful" things.
He said about studies. They are fascinating sketches that retrace the technical inventions and scientific discoveries and theories of man, from flint chipping to spinning and weaving, from clay working to the invention of the wheel, from cave graffiti to metal casting up to DNA, atomic models, missiles and computer printed circuits. A sort of didactic tables. Ernst used the existing ones; Hofstetter creates and composes them along a spiral that is the unfolding of time. The paintings, which are also large, are from 1993-94.
The overall view produces a disorientation which has, so to speak, a preparatory function. After all, it is nice to let oneself be taken by signs, forms, relationships without worrying about their meanings from the very beginning. But then the adventure of continuous discoveries begins. The elements rise from the bottom (prehistory) upwards. The spiral, whose pattern is frequent in the vegetable and animal kingdom, is a very complex symbol. There coexist evolution starting from the center and involution as a return to the center. Following the spiral, the signs of subsequent inventions meet up to the scientific discoveries and advanced technologies of today. But the deeper meaning of all this for man remains enigmatic.
The artist overcomes the difficulty of giving pictorial quality to a narrative thread so rich in historical references. The stylistic solutions are different, as is evident in the comparison of "Schöne neue Welt" I 1993 and "Schöne neue Welt II" 1994.
Francesco di Bartolomeis