Lexus - The Road

Rushes Simone Grattarola accentuates the beauty of the California coast as one of the contemporary art industries’ most noted voices, art curator and critic Jens Hoffmann, takes a ride in the Lexus LS. Shot and edited by Nick Mason of Fasten Your Seat Belt Productions.
“This is the furthest in America we can go,” says Jens Hoffmann over coffee at San Francisco’s Tadich Grill, looking out to the city beyond.

Hoffmann embarks on one of his favourite drives: a short but challenging ride across the Golden Gate Bridge and into the countryside. He’ll head to Stinson Beach, onto the forests in Samuel P. Taylor State Park and then farther up to Point Reyes, Tomales Bay and finally Bodega, a quintessentially California small town — the setting for what he calls Alfred Hitchcock’s “sunshine noir,” The Birds. The drive north is one Hoffmann has embarked on many times, but this time it holds special potency. For the curator, today’s ride will be a farewell to California.

By the time Hoffmann arrives in Bodega, the midday sun is out the town doesn’t appear to have changed much since Hitchcock shot there. When asked what he’ll miss most about the West Coast, Hoffmann doesn’t equivocate, “The light,” he says.

Read less