Deborah Schamoni

It is both the enthusiasm we share for Judith Hopf’s work and the acknowledgement of the little visibility she is granted with in France that are certainly the first motivations that led us to invite her for a simultaneous exhibition in two Parisian venues, at Bétonsalon and Le Plateau. Until now, this artist, born in 1969 in Karlsruhe, known and cel- ebrated far beyond Germany for her videos and sculptures taking a cruel look at the relations marked by domination and dependence humanity entertains with technologies, had not benefited from any monographic exhibition in France. Yet her work is incredibly rich in terms of experi- mentation. Since the early 2000s, her videos, made with friends who play, film, do the music and the special effects with her, tell the story of the violence of social constraints in a tone mixing sarcasm and derision. Her sculptures are in the same spirit. Their simple forms are nourished by a critical thinking, essential for the artist, and by an attention to the history of art and sculpture to which they often refer in a relaxed way. The freedom with which she navigates between these territories leads Judith Hopf to depict some of the objects and beings that populate our daily lives, caught between two states, between the sublime constructed by their social idealisation and the ridiculous disappointment, or even the brutal stupidity, of their reality.

Although it was impossible to give an account of Judith Hopf’s trajectory as a whole, we wanted to accompany her ongoing research while exposing her wake. We therefore invited her to produce new works and to present a selection of existing ones. Thus, at Bétonsalon and Plateau, as well as between the two venues, were getting together works created and chosen to evoke the energy that fuels each of our electronic devices and whose quest is part of our daily lives. The exhibition reminded us that many of our actions and activities depend on the conversion of natural resources into power. It also represented a nature turned into a resource, a place of serial and disembodied production, a world where planning prevails over attention. Énergies thus composed blistering settings of sculptures that were all the more corrosive because they ultimately reflected our daily lives.

This publication carries the same ambition: presenting the diversity and singularity of Judith Hopf’s work entirety, while documenting Énergies. It brings together photographs of this double exhibition as well as of numerous other works, an essay on and an interview with the artist. The latter, conducted during the preparation of the exhibition and after its opening, focuses on the works on view and on Judith Hopf’s practice. The art critic Tom Holert, a long-time friend of the artist, places Hopf’s current questions on production, consumption and dependence on energy in perspective with her career, shedding light on how the political dimension of her work is embodied in artistic issues.

Curated by: Xavier Franceschi & Émilie Renard
Text: Bétonsalon
Photos: Aurélien Mole, Pierre Antoine