Florentijn Hofman is a Dutch artist who creates playful urban installations like the Rubber Duck and the HippopoThames, a 2014 installation on the River Thames in London.
He mostly works on reproducing large versions of everyday objects, such as laminate flooring and flip-flops. With these sculptures, he wants to make people's lives happier. The purpose of his art is to promote the message of healing. In 2005, he created giant bird for the 2005 Crossing Border Festival, where it was perched atop The Hague City Hall. In 2006, Rotterdam's Natural History Museum, whose staff hoped that the statue would prevent birds from flying into the buildings glass windows. His best-known work, Rubber Duck, made its debut in 2007 in Saint-Nazaire, France, and has since appeared in many cities around the world. In 2011 the Hyōgo Prefectural Museum of Art in Kobe, Japan, commissioned him to create another work, which became the Kobe Frog. The museum had initially wanted Rubber Duck to be placed on its roof, which Hofman declined. In 2014, he introduced HippopoThames in London on the River Thames, and Moon Rabbit in Taiwan, ahead of a land-art festival taking place in Taoyuan. In 2016, he created a floating fish sculpture in Wuzhen, China, and two animal sculptures called PETS for Amsterdam's Schiphol Airport. In 2017, he created the Kraken playground in Shenzen, China, on a site that had been occupied by a former soviet aircraft carrier. Hofman's sculptures are temporary—even the Rubber Duck, which makes appearances in cities around the world, is created anew locally. He likes this because wealthy private collectors or those who see art solely as an investment are not able to buy his sculptures. In a 2013 interview, he stated "I'm not a big believer in 'art is forever'. A lot of art is bought by people who have money. But I'm a supporter of public artin public spaces." He is also strictly against commercialization of his art, and only sells miniature replicas, whose profits go to local nonprofits. In Hong Kong in 2013, it was the Joyful Foundation; in Pittsburgh in 2014, it was the Pittsburgh Cultural Trust.
Intellectual property
Hofman's strict stance on commercialization translates to merchandise as well. He canceled an appearance in Keelung, Taiwan, to protest the fact that the organizers had turned the sculpture into a "commercial circus". This led to an op-ed headlined "Copycat Culture Must Stop" in the Global Times, an offshoot of the People's Daily, the official newspaper of the Chinese Communist Party. On the other hand, he has been criticized because "reproductions do not infringe on an intellectual copyright that Hofman can't legitimately claim as his own".
