Professor Hans Stofer is an engineer who works as an artist and teacher and who is deeply interested in stuff as a medium to investigate issues and needs relating to ‘the human condition’.

He first and foremost believes in the power of art to respond to arbitrary standardisation and nonsensical structures – to make sense and to create a multitude of alternative universes.

Inevitably, this is inseparable from and closely bound up with Hans Stofer’s development as an individual.

The governing principle that he deploys is the spontaneous use and appreciation of all art forms and objects available to him to free the imagination from established, often senseless and banal, legislation of life.

The standpoint that he represents closely corresponds to the three requirements that Kurt Schwitters has defined in his 1926 MERZ ideological declaration

‘Contemporary Is the Future of Art’:

1. Human beings cannot create anything in accordance with the almighty divinity. They cannot create nothing from nothing, rather they can merely create out of definite givens, out of definite material. The act of human creating is only a process of forming that which is given.
2. Perfection (completeness) cannot be attained by human beings.
3. In his/her work the artist seeks to strive only for that which he/she can attain. Added to that comes the serious striving to make everything so good, so honest, so open and so logical as possible. The result from all this is (MERZ) HANS.

MERZ (HANS) is the smile at the grave and seriousness on cheerful occasions.