Judith Hopf

Courtesy of the artist and kaufmann repetto Milan / New York

Since the 1990s, Judith Hopf (Germany, b. 1969) has crafted a distinctive artistic vocabulary across sculpture, film, drawing, performance, and stage design. Her work examines the interplay between social norms and power dynamics, both in public spheres and personal spaces. She often incorporates elements from everyday life, rendered in materials such as brick, concrete, and glass to provoke reflections on conventional perceptions, representations, and interactions.

Mechanically carved from solid brick cubes, Brick-Foot is one of a number of sculptures in which Hopf makes common objects out of absurdly counterintuitive materials, foregrounding the dissonance between a thing’s usual function and its elevation to the status of art. Ambiguous but also comical, Hopf’s sculpture suggests our relationship with the surrounding built environment.

Hopf lives and works in Berlin. She has had solo exhibitions at the National Gallery of Denmark, Copenhagen; KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin; Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; Museion, Bolzano, Italy; Malmö Konsthal, Sweden; Studio Voltaire, London; and others. The Walker recently unveiled Hand for Minneapolis (2024), the artist’s first outdoor sculpture in the United States.