Montreal-based artist Bettina Hoffmann presents new photographic work that explores the psychological and corporal relationships between people. An essay by Vancouver-based writer and educator Randy Lee Cutler accompanies the exhibition. Hoffman’s work deals with conflicts, non-verbal communication and the unspoken. Using everyday, banal scenes, she photographs or constructs complex situations of people in an atmosphere of feigned indifference, desperate seduction and veiled humiliation. The result is unsettling, sometimes to a humorous or even ridiculous extent, mirroring human relations in social, intimate and sexual respects. The artist is reflecting on perception, reality and fiction. In a photograph from La soirée falsifiée (The Faked Party), a series of large panoramic photographs, we see many people at a party. A woman laughs, a man screams, an older man is watching the others, a child is motioned to leave the room. The atmosphere is loaded; there is tension that goes beyond the actual event of the party. What seems to be a scenario of a group gathered at a party is actually a montage of people who were photographed individually and later digitally assembled together. Another photograph depicts a woman in a park, smiling into the camera, proudly embracing her "dog," which is actually a person posing like one. In the series Maître et chien (Master and Dog), Hoffmann photographs people posing like dogs with their "owners" in a variety of typical scenarios. The image of the dog is ambiguous and diverse; it represents obedience, dependency and stupidity, as well as symbolizing power and violence. As an animal, it also stands for a certain freedom to follow its instincts, in contrast to human social constraints. This work is dealing with the phenomena of hierarchy, power and control, as well as respect and dignity. Artist bio: Bettina Hoffmann is an artist based in Montreal, originally from Berlin, who has exhibited in numerous shows in Germany, the Netherlands, Austria, England and Canada. Her practice includes installations, projections and objects, and she has recently been working in photography and digital photomontage. Hoffmann’s recent exhibitions include Visions of Me, Zsa Zsa Gallery, Toronto, 2001; Infinite Stories, YYZ Artists’ Outlet, 2001; and Affaires Infinies, Gallery Optica, 2000.