Anne Imhof

Anne Imhof (born 1978 in Giessen, Germany) is a German visual artist, choreographer, and performance artist who lives and works between Frankfurt, Paris and Los Angeles. She is best known for her endurance art (also known as durational performance), although she cites painting and drawing as central to her practice.

In 2015, she was awarded the Preis der Nationalgalerie. In 2017, she received the Golden Lion for her work Faust at the German Pavilion at the Venice Biennale and was ranked No.1 on Monopol's Top 100 list.

She was a visiting professor at the Academy of Fine Arts Munich in 2015.

Early life and education Imhof was born in Giessen and grew up in Fulda. She was born to teacher father, Michael Imhof (born 1947), and dentist mother, Annette Imhof-Kramer. Her cousin is art book publisher Michael Imhof (born 1964).

Imhof attended the Catholic Marienschule in Fulda and the Marianum in Fulda, a private Catholic secondary school in the Marianist tradition, graduating in 1997. She studied a year abroad at Prior Park College in Bath, England. She was suspended from the school and sent home to Germany.

Imhof dropped out of art school as she "couldn't deal with the framework". She described her classes with Hopf, as well as Willem de Rooij and Isabelle Graw, as having been "mind-opening". Whilst she often works in performance, she describes composing them as images. SOTSB was named after the urban legend of a school for thieves and vagabonds, taking Robert Bresson's film Pickpocket (1959) as a starting point. This combined her elements of her works Deal (2015) (which had been previously shown at MoMA's PS1) and Rage (2014) (which had previously been shown at Galerie Deborah Schamoni). This included work where Imhof was the performer. The posters for this exhibition were vandalised by being slashed with a knife whilst the exhibition ran.

Overture, Angst I, Angst II, Angst III, 2016 Imhof describes this work as an opera in three acts. It was shown as exhibitions across four institutions and a live piece that travelled, showing different acts. The music for the work was written by Bill Bultheel. The work was curated by Elena Filipovic.

Angst II was shown at the historical hall of the Hamburger Bahnhof in Berlin in September 2016, The space was fitted with a high wire on which a tightrope walker walked, and filled with fog. Music was played through the performer's individual mobile phones. The work was curated by Anna-Catharina Gebbers and Udo Kittelmann.

Angst III was shown as part of the 2016 Montreal Biennale on 19 October 2016, with the accompanying installation on display at the "Le Grand Balcon" at Musée d'art contemporain de Montréal until January 2017. Evan Moffitt of Frieze described the performance as being "as dreary and aimless as the prospects for many of today's teenagers, facing a future of debt, fascism and climate change." (which translates in English to 'fist'). Pfeffer said that she chose Imhof because her work "reflects on the changes that happen to our bodies in political and technological terms and represents a strong realism in a time of great transformation."

A glass floor was installed in the pavilion (93cm above the floor of the pavilion), Imhof stated that "When you take a glass and [lay it] horizontal, suddenly you know [that all is] not equal; there's an above and a below." one which shows a repeated image of Douglas, with a bare chest, with a name of a woman written on her to imply, Imhof said, "a female legacy...or heritage". It was accompanied by dissonant sounds emitted from a rudimentary sound system and the performers' smartphones. Musician Billy Bultheel worked on the sonic framework for the work. There was also music by Imhof, Elisa Douglas and Franziska Aigner. This award is given to only one of the 85 exhibitions mounted in pavilions in the Giardini della Biennale and across Venice The jury called Faust "a powerful and disturbing installation that poses urgent questions about our time. It pushes the spectator to a state of anxiety." People queued for two hours to enter the pavilion. Frieze named the work No.12 of "The 25 Best Works of the 21st Century". she has said that "That's bullshit. My background is very much an anti-fascist one" and that "I built a fence around the house that the Nazis built, and I let dogs piss on the staircase leading up to it.”

SEX, 2019 Imhof's performance was the first project by a solo female artist to occupy all the Tate Modern's tanks' spaces for the third edition of its annual BMW Tate Live exhibition from 22 to 31 March 2019. The work explored "opposites—femininity and masculinity, above and below, day and night—and explores the blurred boundaries in which they exist",

The performers in the work included Eliza Douglas, dancer/choreographer Josh Johnson, dancer Mickey Mahar, Frances Chiaverini and Naomi Ruiz.

Natures Mortes, 2021 Originally scheduled for March 2020, Imhof's exhibition Natures Mortes (still lives) was held at Palais de Tokyo in 2021. It was curated by Emma Lavigne and Vittoria Matarrese. A Gesamtkunstwerk, the exhibition included paintings, music, drawings, installation and performance work. The space was divided by glass panels. In addition to Imhof's work, the exhibition included the work of 28 (or 32) The exhibition was originally intended to be shown at the Garage Museum of Contemporary Art, Moscow. However, in response to the war in Ukraine, the programme was suspended.

Unlike Imhof's previous exhibitions,YOUTH did not feature live performances, but characters in the form of an avatar. The installation consisted of a labyrinth of lockers, water tanks, car tires and other objects.

Imhof's first exhibition in America, EMO, held at Sprüth Magers, Los Angeles, included the work AI Winter (2021) (also shown at YOUTH). It features Eliza Douglas walking around in the Moscow snow. Imhof describes the piece as communicating "the feeling that is simultaneously torn, trapped and full of life at the same time." The space was "bathed in the eerie red light of a Jumbotron's ticking doomsday clock overhead". The performance lasted three hours. It began with the audience pressed up against metal barriers.

Amongst the 50–60 performers included Eliza Douglas; actress Talia Ryder; Tahil Myth, Casper van Bülow; Levi Strasser; Sihana Shalaj; skaters Jourdynn Sherman and Joe Endo; Perla Haney-Jardine; Coco Gordon Moore; Jeremy "OPT" Perez; ballet dancers: Michael de la Nuez, Toon Lobach, Devon Teuscher, Tyler Maloney, Jacqueline Bologna, Connor Holloway, Desean Taber, and Daniil Simkin. Imhof describes having a "super potent, super talented, female-identifying cast". During the performance, Douglas draws on her bare torso with black marker, shoves playing cards into her mouth and howls like a woolf.

For the work, Imhof collaborated with Nike, reinterpreting the "Total 90" jersey from the 2000s. Using football jerseys was an extension of the idea of rivalry amongst youth.

The piece received mixed reviews. Alex Greenberger, of ARTnews, described it as both "weird" and "glib, dull and hopeless", saying that: "The entire performance has the cooler-than-thou vibe of a Balenciaga runway show, replete with a range of rail-thin zillennials in baggy jeans; it has all the surface-level appeal of a Vogue slideshow devoted to one of those events, too."

Jeanette Bisschops, of Frieze, describes that the work "delivers an unapologetic tribute to dance, music, theatre and literature – imbued, as always, with youthful defiance." She also performed with her band 'Beautiful Balance' since 2012.

Imhof was previously in a relationship and was engaged to artist and collaborator Eliza Douglas,

Exhibitions and performances

Solo Shows

Group Shows

Collections

From the Lion's Paw (2012), Museum für Moderne Kunst, Frankfurt, Inv. No. 2013/71 The inner circle became the outer circle (2012), Museum für Moderne Kunst, Frankfurt, Inv. No. 2013/73 Room IV (2021), Hamburger Bahnhof, Museum in Motion – A Collection for the 21st Century

Sound recordings

Awards 2012: Graduate Award of the Städelschule Portikus e. V. 2012: ZAC (zonta art contemporary) 2013: Studio Scholarship in Paris from Hessische Kulturstiftung (Hessian Cultural Foundation) 2017: Absolut Art Award, Stockholm 2017: Golden Lion for best national contribution at the Biennale di Venezia 2015: Preis der Nationalgalerie 2022: Binding-Kulturpreis 2022: Goethe Plaque of the City of Frankfurt