Deborah Schamoni

Each year the Endless Exhibition will be expanded by a newly commissioned work of art that is to be permanently acquired for the collection of the Nationalgalerie. Berlin-based artist Judith Hopf, whose installation and sculptural work deals with social definitions and power relations, will kick off this important expansion of the collection.

Slanted blue lines – some short and narrow, some long and wide – run across the walls on the ground floor and in the stairwell of the Hamburger Bahnhof. The painted lines represent rain. Nearby, bare branches jut out from the white walls in unexpected places in the rooms leading between the cloakroom and the exhibitions. Artist Judith Hopf explores the energies and resisting forces of nature that lie beyond the influence of humankind. The straight lines of her Rain wall paintings visualise, through a simplified form, the forces of atmospheric weather. The branches – each titled Sumac Branch Resembling a Cherry Blossom Branch – grow organically into the museum’s angular spaces. Only upon closer inspection does it become clear that the branches are not composed of wood, but of bronze. With these sculptures, Hopf alludes to sumac trees that she found growing on a Berlin building site. Although the sumac resembles the cherry tree in form, as a wild and unusable plant it is its opposite. Hopf plays with these similarities and spotlights how power and meaning can be won from differences and changes of environment.

The exhibition is conceived by Sam Bardaouil and Till Fellrath, directors of the Hamburger Bahnhof – Nationalgalerie der Gegenwart, curated by Alice Koegel, Head of Exhibitions and Curator at the Hamburger Bahnhof – Nationalgalerie der Gegenwart.

Text: Hamburger Bahnhof
Photos: Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Nationalgalerie / Jacopo La Forgia, © VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2023