Deborah Schamoni

The confrontation of forms as an intensification of the contradictions of contemporary conditions points to a central theme in Judith Hopf’s work. In a world where everything seems to be in flux – communication, work, capitalism – Judith Hopf pursues the hard edges that still mark the field of the social despite all processes of dematerialization and de-hierarchization, standardizing bodies and identities and assigning each individual to its place.Formal questions turn into ethical issues here, while the orders of the political surreptitiously manifest themselves in the material.

In this, Judith Hopf’s view of social processes is a decidedly skewed one: she is expressly not interested in the immediate depiction of social or political facts in the medium of art. Instead, she makes use of art as an autonomous space, within which the circumstances can be made to dance. Specifically by claiming aesthetic autonomy, her works gain the possibility for themselves to productively circumvent contemporary discourses. Slapstick, comedy and caricature serve the artist as means for provoking ruptures and openings in the order of things, derailing well-rehearsed routines of interpretation – whether they are of a political or an aesthetic nature.In this perspective, the diversity of Judith Hopf’s œuvre as a whole can also be read as a strategy of permanent selfprovocation: the continuous change of media – from installation and sculpture, through film, video and performance, all the way to graphical and ceramic works – and the collaboration with other artists that she seeks again and again repeatedly challenge the sedimentations of her own practice, thus opening up ever new spaces of productivity.