2010 Signature Edition Series
Orit Hofshi
If the Tread is an Echo
Edition size: 6
Medium/ description: Woodcut on handmade Abaca & Kozo Paper, By Tut- Neyar paper mill, Israel
Dimensions: 39 2/5 x 78 7/10 inches
Orit Hofshi works by hand on a very large scale, achieving monumentality while retaining an intimate quality in her prints. This tension between grandeur and intimacy is an important feature in her work, which can be viewed from a great distance and has the ability to lure the viewer close to the surface, where its texture becomes apparent. Hofshi works primarily in woodcut, a technique that has experienced a revival in contemporary printmaking, its atavic associations contrasting with the visual output of the technologically driven society we live in. Hofshi usually works in a fixed format, using standard-size sheets of pine from a builder’s supply store. She creates varied horizontal and vertical matrices with the panels, adding to or subtracting from the grid as she works on the image. Sometimes she integrates the yet-to-be-printed matrix as part of the work, displaying the wooden boards adjacent to the prints.
“If the Tread is an Echo highlights my preoccupation with the ephemeral nature of our existence, and the fluidity of time. Time flows through the work like the river envisioned in it.
The prominence given to natural elements in my work considers the archetypal significance of Wood, Water, and Rock. In these natural contexts, Hofshi finds an emphasized sense of evolution, time and struggles, as records of natural phenomenon as well as reflections of human history and the human condition . The dark ink in its multiple patterns and layers is not only the manifestation of different stages of print making but also reference to natural and human fleeting tread marks.”
– Orit Hofshi
Orit Hofshi lives and works in Herzliya, Israel.
Read more about Orit Hofshi's project for Philagrafika 2010 here.
For purchase information please contact: Rebecca Mott at rmott@philagrafika.org or call 215-701-8057.