Judith Hopf

Friday April 27, 2007
Lecture Hall, 5:00pm

In her art, Judith Hopf deals with stories and aesthetics associated with the sphere of everyday culture, using forms of expression including performance, video, sculpture, and works on paper. Her choice of medium, however, is less decisive than her passionate interest in the field where politics, art, and theory overlap, which can be considered as the frame of reference for many of her projects. A recurrent issue in her work is her profound skepticism towards all forms of homogenization and the forgetting that accompanies it. According to Hopf, this “tyranny of the same” and the “unfinished” has something eerie about it. Other regular features of her work are a paradoxical panopticon of self-portrayal and a belief in a brightly colored, glamorous pop poetic. Many of Hopf’s works are developed in collaboration with other artists and theoreticians. On the basis of critical observations of the everyday, a feeling of political unease with society, and the adaptation of various stories from literary and cinematic sources, she has realized a series of co-productions, the latest of which appear in her show at Secession Vienna. Hopf was guest lecturer at the Merz Academy Stuttgart, and guest professor of sculpture and video art at the Kunsthochschule, Berlin, Weissensee. She lives and works in Berlin.