Artists

Judith Hopf

Press release

kaufmann repetto is pleased to present judith hopf’s flying cinema, an installation with three videos selected by the artist. suspended from the ceiling, black curtains form a rectangular projection chamber, its interior hosting a screen. as soon as viewers enter this mysterious tent, they become involuntarily part of the display: seen from the outside, their bodies disappear except for their legs, conferring the scene a comic vein, reminiscent of a circus stage where a magician performs his tricks.

slapstick humor is also what characterizes hopf’s experimental filmmaking, a central part of her practice since the late 1990s. in the film some end of things: the conception of youth, an egg moves stoically through the atrium of a modernist architectural structure, ascending stairs, walking through corridors and connecting bridges, and reflecting in the grid of the facade as it passes by. eventually, it fails in its attempt to enter the glass, steel, and concrete edifice. the egg is too large, the door too small, and its body too rigid to yield – an idea becomes wedged within the structure of a standardized world. the relation between man-made technology and nature, one of hopf’s most recurrent themes, is the subject of up. here, the peaceful silence of a bucolic countryside is interrupted by the noise of a fastly approaching suv. suddenly the car, without any apparent reason, leans over on one side and starts to drive up a hill on two wheels only, before it falls back on all four wheels and a basketball rolls down the country lane. the surprise about the crazy driving stunt is subverted by the even greater and more hilarious surprise of the rolling ball, insinuating wild and audacious ideas about the possible motifs underlying the plot. based on hopf’s manifesto contrat entre les hommes at l’ordinateur, the homonymous video that completes the screening program analyzes the predominance of techno-driven work and production conventions. following the thoughts of hannah arendt about the relation between humans and technical devices, hopf poses the question if the ideas we project onto computers and cellphones have taken over our intelligence and emotion, does it make us slaves of the projection rather than of the machines themselves.

judith hopf (b. 1969), lives and works in berlin. her works have been exhibited internationally in solo shows such as: kölnskulptur #11, cologne (2024–2026); minneapolis sculpture garden, the walker art center (2024); bétonsalon – centre d’art e de recherche and le plateau, frac île-de-france, paris (2022); kw, institute for contemporary art, berlin (2018); statens museum for kunst, copenhagen (2018); hammer museum, los angeles (2017); museion, bozen (2016); neue galerie, kassel (2015); praxes center for contemporary art, berlin (2014); fondazione morra greco, naples (2013); studio voltaire, london (2013); badischer kunstverein, karlsruhe (2013); and malmø konsthal, malmø (2012) among others. hopf also participated in the biennale gherdëina (2022); biennale de montréal (2016); 8th liverpool biennal (2014); and documenta (13) kassel (2012). recent group exhibitions include: hamburger bahnhof, berlin (2023); boccata d’arte, aquileia (2023); capc musée d’art contemporain de bordeaux, bordeaux (2023); mumok, vienna (2021); mmk, frankfurt (2021); kunstmuseum bonn, bonn (2020); marta, herford (2020); lenbachhaus, munich (2018); musée régional d’art contemporain languedoc – roussillon, sérignan (2018); south london gallery, london (2018); kunsthaus hamburg, hamburg (2018); gak gesellschaft fur aktuelle kunst, bremen (2018); mudam, luxembourg (2017). hopf’s work is held in the collections of frac île-de-france, paris; lenbachhaus, munich; madre museo d’arte contemporanea donnaregina, naples; mumok, vienna; museion, bozen; museum of contemporary art, chicago; sammlung deutsche bank, frankfurt; smk – national gallery of denmark, copenhagen; staatsgalerie stuttgart, stuttgart; syz collection, geneva among others.