Hofer was born with a mental and physical handicap (he is deaf). He spent his childhood and youth isolated on the family farm and part of his adult life in institutions. In 1997, he began to engage in drawing at the Lebenshilfe drop-in center in Ried. An important moment in his artistic career was when he discovered his sexually aroused body in the mirror. He transfers his auto-erotic experiences onto paper and, with narcissistic pleasure, identifies with male nudes from photo-erotic catalogues. He places the predominantly male figures into colorful frames that define the figure’s position and force it into unnatural positions. Hofer repeats one theme in multiple series in which the individual drawings differ only in subtle nuances.
HOFER josef
