Judith Hopf

(Germany) *1969 in Karlsruhe

In her multifaceted work encompassing a wide range of media from sculpture to film and drawing, Judith Hopf often takes up forms from our industrial and technological environment. The concrete figure “Phone User 4 (outdoor)” at Blickachsen 14, for example, uses subtle humour to illustrate a pose that can often be observed in everyday life. Instead of gazing at the picturesque surroundings of the Kurpark, the figure is immersed in the screen of its cell phone, with which it forms an inseparable unit. The work “tire outdoor”, created for the exhibition – referring back to the invention of the wheel – is a monument to the air-filled tyre, a trivial object without which contemporary flows of people and goods would be unthinkable. The inclined position of the concrete tyre suggests rapid movement on the one hand, and the loss of speed at the moment before tipping over, on the other. Both works subtly reflect aspects of our consumer behaviour in an increasingly accelerated world.
Judith Hopf, who was already represented at Blickachsen 13, studied at the art academies in Bremen and Berlin. She has been invited internationally to numerous major solo and group exhibitions, such as documenta (2012), and has been a professor at the Städelschule in Frankfurt since 2008.
 

Blickachsen 13 (2023)
In her wide-ranging work in a variety of media, including sculpture, film, drawing or performance, Judith Hopf addresses socio-political questions with a quiet, complex humour that one often only notices on a second glance. In works such as “Waiting Laptops” or “Exhausted Vases”, she references defining issues of our time: conventions, role attributions, the functioning of the individual, in which the boundaries between man and machine, the private and the public, work and leisure, seem to have become increasingly blurred. In Blickachsen 13 Hopf is represented by three works reflecting her preoccupation with everyday items and materials – here, red bricks. The sculptures on display in the Schlosspark, “A hole and the filling of the hole”, “A pear with two bites”, and “Birne (Pear)”, appear – with the abstracted bite marks on one of the ‘pears’ and on the wall – almost comic-like, conveying an impression of lightness and heaviness simultaneously.
Judith Hopf studied at the Art Academies in Bremen and Berlin, and in addition to documenta (2012), has been invited to take part in many solo and group exhibitions internationally. Since 2008 she has taught as a professor of fine arts at the Städelschule in Frankfurt.