Florentijn Hofman

Florentijn Hofman (born 16 April 1977) is a Dutch artist who creates urban installations like the Rubber Duck and the HippopoThames, a 2014 installation on the River Thames in London. Hofman was born on 16 April 1977 in Delfzijl in the Netherlands. He attended primary and secondary school in Emmen. He studied arts at the art academy of Kampen. He earned a master's degree in art in Weissensee, Berlin. He lives in Arnhem, the Netherlands, and has four children. He mostly works on reproducing huge and large versions of everyday objects, such as laminate large flooring and flip-flops. The purpose of his art is to promote the message of healing. In 2005, he created a giant bird for the 2005 Crossing Border Festival, where it was perched atop The Hague City Hall. In 2006, the bird was installed in 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 Shenzhen, 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'.