In her current work Hofshi presents the image of a vast romantic landscape. Her chosen technique, the woodcut, habitually serves as a negative from which the print is produced. Here, however, the artist presents not the customary final product – the print, but rather the blocks themselves, as the objects of presentation. Unlike print, in woodcuts the relief quality of the work and the transitions from the two-dimensional to the three-dimensional are discernible. Combining eighteen blocks into a single unit yields an epic landscape that unfolds in the exhibition space. A closer look into this monumental nature reveals a group of human figures. The work addresses the constant human search for “evidence” – whether evidence of historical events or a private biography; a quest for something that would introduce meaning to the infinity of space and time. As maintained by Dan Miller of the Pennsylvania Academy of Art in his essay for the exhibition catalogue: “Orit Hofshi confronts the viewer with both challenge and wonder. … Recorded on the earth’s ample face are time’s indelible traces, a past-recorded rock-by-rock and resistant of time’s insistent wash. A diminished figurative presence reminds us of earth’s enveloping scale and of our own most evident frailty.”

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