Terry Hoff’s paintings portray oddly familiar snippets of imagery floating in colliding layers of fractured, abstract space. His candy-colored visions have a “strange beauty” that is at once alluring and unsettling. They seem to open up a window into the disorienting subconscious mindscapes looming below the noisy blur of our over- stimulated lives, giving us a peek at the subliminal conflicts and questions beneath the glossy surface of American Pop Culture. For Hoff, the creative process is one of endless inquiry into an alternate universe of possibilities. “Painting will always take me to the place of questions, not answers. Will internal combustion engines be able to increase horsepower infinitely? What do animals see? Why is our picture of reality the only reality? These are a few of the things I think about when I paint.”

To create his complex imagery and illusions of space, Hoff skillfully employs a unique combination of materials – acrylic paints and mediums, spray paint, airbrush, latex enamels, polyurethane, and epoxy resin – which are variously painted, masked, repainted, and repeatedly layered, often incorporating collaged paper and “decals” made of paint. Hoff is always looking for ways to challenge his methods of working and ways of seeing, and his studio practice is one of passionate experimentation and relentlessly playful inventiveness. Hoff has recently begun to photograph elements from his past body of work, distorting the images and painting the warped forms into his new works. As he creates each artwork, he chooses from his “playpen of paint” whatever techniques he feels will best serve his vision, openly inviting the discovery of the new and unexpected at every turn. Hoff’s relentless drive to reinvent his work results in frequent re-working of both his works in progress and his older paintings over time, and they often go through several incarnations before they are “completed” to his satisfaction.

Terry Hoff attended San Joaquin Delta College in Stockton, CA and the Academy of Art University in San Francisco, where he currently teaches. His work has been exhibited widely, including RARE Gallery and Heidi Cho Gallery in New York, NY; SFMOMA Artist’s Gallery, Andrea Schwartz Gallery, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, Luggage Store Gallery, Four Walls, and Lizabeth Oliveria Gallery in San Francisco; Acuna-Hansen Gallery, Los Angeles; and Traywick Gallery, Berkeley. He was a 1999 recipient of the prestigious Eureka Fellowship from the Fleishhacker Foundation.