judith hopf – énergies

Bétonsalon is part­nering with Le Plateau, Frac Île-de-France to host a two-part exhi­bi­tion by Judith Hopf.
Since the 2000s, the German artist has been making sculp­tures and films fuelled by her reflec­tions on the rela­tion­ships that human beings have with tech­nology. For this first mono­graphic exhi­bi­tion in France, Judith Hopf unites existing and pre­vi­ously unseen works. Some of them res­onate from one exhi­bi­tion to the other. Its title, Énergies, refers to what fuels each of our everyday elec­trical appli­ances, viewed from both a tech­nical and philo­soph­ical per­spec­tive.

While at Le Plateau, the works revolve around the trans­for­ma­tion of the land­scape into a source of energy, it is more a ques­tion of its con­sump­tion at Bétonsalon. A sculp­ture cre­ated for the exhi­bi­tion rep­re­sents a light­ning bolt, a nat­ural explo­sion that high­lights the origin of elec­tricity, its power and danger. Its use is at the heart of Énergies, where sculp­tures and films sug­gest a world depen­dent on elec­tricity con­sumed without con­sid­er­a­tion for the terms of its pro­duc­tion. We dis­cover the Phone Users, human fig­ures busy looking at their tele­phones. Absorbed in the con­tem­pla­tion of their screens, they seem cut o from their imme­diate envi­ron­ment, which is com­prised of over­sized apple peel sculp­tures.

Judith Hopf’s work is full of the con­tra­dic­tions that per­vade our daily lives and which she brings to light in all their strangeness. The numerous inver­sions and shifts that she brings into play in her work, by rep­re­senting scenes that are so familiar that they become unusual, even ironic, are an invi­ta­tion to think of alter­na­tives, to see dif­fer­ently rather than to con­sume more and more quickly. Moreover, Énergies reminds us that in this age of video­con­fer­encing, large quan­ti­ties of elec­tricity and human energy are needed to set up exhi­bi­tions. The Phone Users are a metaphor for this, pre­suming that they try to reach each other between the two exhi­bi­tions, and that they try to com­mu­ni­cate to the extent of announcing to each other: « There’s no net­work”.

This exhi­bi­tion in two parts is co-pro­duced with Le Plateau, Frac Île-de-France and is sup­ported by the Institut für Auslandsbeziehungen, and the gal­leries Deborah Schamoni, Munich and kauf­mann repetto, Milan and New York.

Xavier Franceschi is the director of Frac Île-de-France.
François Aubart is an inde­pen­dent curator, pub­lisher (Même pas l’hiver) and teaches at the École nationale supérieure d’arts de Paris-Cergy (ENSAPC).