Judith Hopf's 'Up' at Museion: Irony and Subversion in Bolzano

Judith Hopf's first solo exhibition in an Italian museum, titled 'Up', opened at Museion in Bolzano in 2016. The show explores tension, interruption, and visual stumbling through playful deconstruction of certainties and social conventions. Hopf sculpts everyday objects like a soccer ball or travel trolley from bricks, highlighting paradox and absurdity. Her works also include architectural brick walls that divide space, and references to Roman-era colossi through sculpted feet, fingers, and hands. The exhibition engages with the surrounding landscape and city of Bolzano, featuring pieces like 'Flack of Sheep'—cement sheep emerging from cardboard boxes—and 'Raben', black porcelain birds shaped from medicine packaging. Hopf's films, often shown in cramped, self-built spaces, depict states of constraint and rebellion, such as a SUV losing control on a mountain road in 'Husse 2', a man in a giant egg costume moving awkwardly through modernist architecture in 'Some End of things: the Conception of youth', and a girl flooding an apartment in 'Lily's laptop'. The exhibition runs at Museion, Bolzano, curated by Luigi Meneghelli.