A Closer Look
Ruan Hoffmann’s striking, delicate ceramics offer a tactile, intimate experience that defies the digital age. Photographer Inge Prins travels to Amsterdam to explore his studio.
ART / BULLETIN / 06.10.23
Read time / 7 mins
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Creative Director
Writer
Photographer
Scale plays an integral role in Ruan’s work, from the way it’s produced to the way you interact with it.
[01] Scale plays an integral role in Ruan’s work, from the way it’s produced to the way you interact with it.
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“It’s like being inside a poem,” photographer Inge Prins says of her experience shooting the studio.
“The ceramics are the focus of what I do,” says Ruan. “I’ve sort of given up on trying to tell people that there’s other stuff. If people collect my work, eventually they get to it.”
A three-month residency in Amsterdam with the Thami Mnyele Foundation in 2010 set Ruan’s northern move in motion. Working from Johannesburg felt very isolated, a continent away from his primary market, the US, and the European art world. With the majority of his solo shows over the past decade in France and the United States, Amsterdam’s centrality feels just right: “It’s almost provincial,” Ruan says. “A provincial European capital, but I love it.” Less than a year after moving into the adjoining building in 2012, his loft space became available and, friendly with the owners, Ruan got first dibs. “People are scratching each other’s eyes out for places in Amsterdam,” he says. “So I was very lucky to get a studio right next to my house. I don’t have to travel. I just come up the stairs and I work.”
Ruan’s most identifiable work is an ongoing series of plates, just under 30cm in diameter, serving subversive statement calligraphy like “everything is bad for you,” “your opinion no thanks,” “blood buzz,” and “bonjour mother fucker”. Anything but utilitarian, Ruan’s ceramic plates, vessels and figures are handmade (you might say hand-warped) as if to emerge from the world depicted in his lesser publicised paintings and drawings. Art historians would point out the 17th century oriental ceramic, surrealist and neoclassical references, and likely credit the written statements to a moody expressionism that reflects contemporary society’s short fuse. The most accessible lens through which to view the work is as a juxtaposition of a fleeting thought on a permanent medium, or in the case of the slogan plates, poignantly satirised Live Laugh Love culture. “I don’t really try and explain it. I always sound like an idiot if I do,” Ruan laughs. “I sort of feel my obligation stops after the work is made.”
Born, raised and educated in Pretoria, Ruan Hoffmann is now very much officially settled in Holland, having received his Dutch citizenship this month. The artist’s studio in a 19th century building on the canal in central Amsterdam has a view of the Rijksmuseum rooftop. The loft is divided in two: A thickly carpeted storage space on the front half of the building houses rails and shelves of plates, paintings and packaging, photographed for this story in natural light reflecting off the water outside. The other half is Ruan’s workspace: considerably more cluttered with pigments, other paintings, ceramics in progress, and a kiln that doesn’t exceed the floor’s weight limit. “Usually after a week of working I have to clean because it’s a mess,” he says. “I had somebody who came in to clean the studio but it just freaked me out. I can’t deal with strange people in that environment—I’m too fussy. I have to do it myself.”
“You can have a profound, intimate experience with a smaller work of art.”
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These bottles of liquid gold and platinum add the layer of lustre often seen to Ruan’s work.
Every month, a goederenlift delivers between 30 and 50 12kg bags of clay to Ruan’s loft window. These need to be stacked along the walls so as not to concentrate too much weight in one area.
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"I like to take it very slow," Ruan shares. "Actually, I’m very private. I don’t really like a lot of people at my studio.”
“You’re going to decipher the text," Ruan says. “Hopefully it unlocks something that resonates, snags you into looking at the object more closely.” Plates are wrapped in tissue paper and bubblewrap before nestling into a box of packing chips for shipping.
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Ruan's workspace requires regular decluttering. "Usually after a week of working I have to clean," he says.
A regular day-in-the-life starts early, between 04:00 and 06:00, with a cycle through the streets of Amsterdam. The rest of his morning energy is channelled into work. “I try to get into the studio at least once a day, even if I just move stuff around. I don’t have to make something, I just like to be there.” Afternoons are for admin: a room below the studio serves as an informal showroom, where clients and buyers visit, and where he conducts our Zoom interview in front of a framed Galerie Chave Max Ernst poster, dwarfed by a sizeable tapestry based on one of his designs, both of which offset black and white with tomato red. Ruan prizes his independence: “I don’t want to be beholden to any galleries and be, sort of, forced to do a show every year.”
“You’re going to decipher the text," Ruan says. “Hopefully it unlocks something that resonates, snags them into looking at the object more closely.”
Growing up in Pretoria in the 70s and 80s, Ruan attended every art show he could, devouring books to build a global knowledge of art and its history. “It sounds very analogue,” he says with a throwaway self-deprecating laugh. Travelling to Europe for the first time and seeing the real-life versions of works he knew, reproduced to varying degrees of accuracy in books, was a surprising experience: “Size-wise and colour-wise, you’re confronted with something else, a different artwork.”
“And that probably also has to do with Instagram now,” Ruan speculates. When swiftly scrolling through a feed of endless stamp-size imagery, “you lose context and emotion. You’re not really seeing, you’re just looking.” Perhaps this has resulted in a trend towards large-scale artworks, which doesn’t resonate with him. “A tiny piece can shout just as loudly. I think you can have a profound, intimate experience with a smaller work of art. With ceramics there’s a tactile component: this added emotional value. We all have a relationship with something like a plate, this rather mundane domestic object.”
Ruan's workspace requires regular decluttering. "Usually after a week of working I have to clean," he says.
A Closer Look
Ruan Hoffmann’s striking, delicate ceramics offer a tactile, intimate experience that defies the digital age. Photographer Inge Prins travels to Amsterdam to explore his studio.
[005] BULLETIN / 06.10.23
Read time / 7 mins
Creative Director
Writer
[01]
Photographer
A three-month residency in Amsterdam with the Thami Mnyele Foundation in 2010 set Ruan’s northern move in motion. Working from Johannesburg felt very isolated, a continent away from his primary market, the US, and the European art world. With the majority of his solo shows over the past decade in France and the United States, Amsterdam’s centrality feels just right: “It’s almost provincial,” Ruan says. “A provincial European capital, but I love it.” Less than a year after moving into the adjoining building in 2012, his loft space became available and, friendly with the owners, Ruan got first dibs. “People are scratching each other’s eyes out for places in Amsterdam,” he says. “So I was very lucky to get a studio right next to my house. I don’t have to travel. I just come up the stairs and I work.”
Ruan’s most identifiable work is an ongoing series of plates, just under 30cm in diameter, serving subversive statement calligraphy like “everything is bad for you,” “your opinion no thanks,” “blood buzz,” and “bonjour mother fucker”. Anything but utilitarian, Ruan’s ceramic plates, vessels and figures are handmade (you might say hand-warped) as if to emerge from the world depicted in his lesser publicised paintings and drawings. Art historians would point out the 17th century oriental ceramic, surrealist and neoclassical references, and likely credit the written statements to a moody expressionism that reflects contemporary society’s short fuse. The most accessible lens through which to view the work is as a juxtaposition of a fleeting thought on a permanent medium, or in the case of the slogan plates, poignantly satirised Live Laugh Love culture. “I don’t really try and explain it. I always sound like an idiot if I do,” Ruan laughs. “I sort of feel my obligation stops after the work is made.”
Born, raised and educated in Pretoria, Ruan Hoffmann is now very much officially settled in Holland, having received his Dutch citizenship this month. The artist’s studio in a 19th century building on the canal in central Amsterdam has a view of the Rijksmuseum rooftop. The loft is divided in two: A thickly carpeted storage space on the front half of the building houses rails and shelves of plates, paintings and packaging, photographed for this story in natural light reflecting off the water outside. The other half is Ruan’s workspace: considerably more cluttered with pigments, other paintings, ceramics in progress, and a kiln that doesn’t exceed the floor’s weight limit. “Usually after a week of working I have to clean because it’s a mess,” he says. “I had somebody who came in to clean the studio but it just freaked me out. I can’t deal with strange people in that environment—I’m too fussy. I have to do it myself.”
“You can have a profound, intimate experience with a smaller work of art.”
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Inge Prins photographed this story on a rare sunny day in Amsterdam, using natural light reflecting off the canal. The next day, she captured Ruan’s home for The World of Interiors.
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This work in progress “still needs to be glazed and refired,” Ruan says. “I got bored with it and moved on—might finish it later.”
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A random collection of older works wait to be purchased on a shelf in the workroom. Says Ruan: “Here they’re out of harm’s way,” he clarifies, “me.”
Linen boxes, made by a local bookmaker, house drawings and plates.