Rinaldo Hopf | Postcards from L.A.

About

The Berlin artist, publisher (Mein schwules Auge) and curator Rinaldo Hopf was in the winter of 2017 Artist in Residence at the Tom of Finland Foundation in Los Angeles. There he had the opportunity to study the work process and the works of Tom of Finland in detail: from Tom's material collections and scrapbooks, through numerous preliminary studies to the perfect masterpieces.

Inspired by Tom's works, the house with its subtropical garden and the extraordinary inhabitants, as well as the immediate neighborhood of Hollywood, he created an orgy panorama in cinemascope format on dozens of hand-crafted Chinese papers. Here, blacks, whites, cowboys, and hippies hover between palm trees and orange trees in orgiastic lust.

The exhibition is rounded off by numerous detailed and natural studies of the colorful Los Angeles Universe in postcard size, golden portraits of Hollywood stars like Greta Garbo and James Franco, and a large scale banner with the portrait of a "Tom's Man".

RINALDO HOPF

Rinaldo was born in Freiburg, West Germany on June 30, 1955. He studied Art, Cultural Anthropology and Religious History in Freiburg, West Germany, San Francisco, California, and Bremen, West Germany where he graduated (with honors). He worked as a Visual Artist in San Francisco, California and Paris, France (Atelier Dedalo Montali) and as an Art Therapist in Forensic Institutions in San Francisco and West Berlin. He currently lives and works as a Visual Artist, Editor and Curator in Berlin. Two books of his photography: "Subversiv", 2004; "Amore", 2006 and his art book "Trickster", 2013 were published by Konkursbuch Verlag Claudia Gehrke, Tübingen, Germany. He edited the anthology "Mein schwules Auge / My gay Eye" 3 - 11, 2006 - 2016 for the same publisher. In preparation is a special edition of “My gay Eye” on the collection of erotic art at The of Tom Finland Foundation, Los Angeles and Rinaldo’s new art book "Movies of my Youth" featuring his watercolors inspired by the films of R.W.Fassbinder, P.P.Pasolini and A.Warhol.

SELECTED  SOLO  AND  GROUP  SHOWS

PS1 Museum and  Leslie & Lohman Museum, New York; UC Irvine, California; Academy of Fine Arts, Gay Museum and NGbK, Berlin; Deichtorhallen, Hamburg; Ataturk Cultural Center, Istanbul; Musee d’Art Contemporain, Lausanne; Museo MAC Ibirapuera, Sao Paulo; Museo del Chopo, Mexico City; Circulo Bellas Artes, Madrid and others.