Extra Credit Event 1: Judith Hopf

I chose to attend the Hammer museum for this extra credit event. I attended Judith Hopf’s exhibit. She is a German artist that moved to Germany right after the fall of the Berlin Wall. Her art represents certain movements in the long history of the medium, such as the portrayal of the body in ancient statuary or the impact of American Minimalism. Hopf’s art frequently consists of supplies one would find in a hardware store such as concrete, rebar, plywood, clay, and bricks. For example the art in her exhibit at the Hammer contained bricks and concrete and other materials that can be bought from a hardware store.

             Hopf’s artwork and sculptures were placed in a room with a big glass door at the opening with tall ceilings and white walls. The floor was concrete, which goes with her theme of raw materials. The majority of the sculptures in the exhibit were made of brick and if not they were still made with construction like materials. The art was on the ground, on the walls, and even hanging from the ceiling.

The brick pieces displayed were a pair of feet, a hand, a ball, a miniature brick wall, and what seemed to be a bird. The brick feet that were on display were symmetric in size but had a slightly different brick texture and orientation. One of the feet looks just like a brick wall but in the form of a foot instead. The other foot seems to be made of a different style of brick and has rectangular like holes in it, giving it a different texture. The differing texture of the foot resembled a human foot without the skin with just the muscle, bone, tissue, and tendon structure exposed. The brick sculpture of a hand was the biggest of scale in the room. It was sculpted into a hand gesture/placement similar to someone flipping you off. Instead the hand gesture was sculpted with the pointer finer pointing up. The brick ball when I first saw it reminded me of a volleyball because the brick and mortar depicted perfectly the stitching a leather panels that make up a volleyball. However, the ball sculpture refers to a series of soccer balls in remembrance of deceased artist. Another brick item in the exhibit was a mini brick wall. The brick wall is one of the prop techniques she uses to define spaces and control movement within the gallery. The bird sculpture in the room was also made out of brick. The bird is displayed on a white box higher up than the other brick sculpture. It is almost if the bird’s positioning is meant to represent a real bird who sits perched above the ground.

On the walls were three ptictures that all looked very similar with what looked to be a chair with human like features. Each picture had drawn on legs and arms as the legs if the chair and what would normally be the back of the chair were faces drawn instead. Two of the chair people type of things wore hats and the other had a mass of curly hair. The expressions on their faces were all sad looking with a straight dull smile. The emotion of the faces did not exactly portray happiness. The colors of the pictures are dismal and coincide directly with the expressions of the faces. After reading the excerpt about her art in the exhibit I found out that the pictures on the walls were laptops instead of chairs. They are “Waiting Laptops” representing images of laptops being placed on a floor or propped up against a wall.

Hanging from the ceiling were three ropes each differently colored and shaped. The same ropes were revealed emerging from the ground on the other end of the exhibit. This offered the perspective that the ropes ran through the ceiling and down and around to the ground, again emerging up back into the exhibit.

I would recommend touring this exhibit if you are at the Hammer museum. Just going to the Hammer itself is a fascinating experience itself. When I went to see this exhibit it was my first time at the Hammer. I enjoyed Judith Hopf’s use of hardware type materials to sculpt and create her art. 

• (All of the photos are mine)
• Attended the event/exhibit on Tuesday, May 23rd 2017