Sprüth Magers to participate in TEFAF New York with a solo presentation dedicated to the work of Anne Imhof.
Coming on the heels of the artist’s largest performance to date—DOOM: House of Hope, which occupied the Park Avenue Armory just prior to TEFAF—the works on view highlight a new medium for the artist: bronze.
First exhibited in her solo show at Kunsthaus Bregenz in 2024, her metallic reliefs adopt this ancient material to continue her investigations into the movements and nuances of the human body.
Imhof is best known for her enduring performances and spectral paintings, yet her artistic practice originates in her drawings, where the body, its movements, expressions and moods take center stage. Using spare, purposeful lines, they delineate wraithlike figures, often in communion with each other and with animals in a manner that evokes timeless, mythological scenes. These works can be understood as blueprints for one of the artist’s performances, where improvising bodies act as pictorial elements that create meaning and emotion through choreographed gestures.
Imhof’s most recent works transform this ongoing drawing practice into sculptural, patinated bronze reliefs in the tradition of artists from antiquity to the Italian Renaissance through August Rodin. In Untitled (Silas) (2024), for example, Imhof’s lines and shading are translated into three dimensions, the figures becoming literally embodied, with seductively smooth, bronzed skin. The scene depicts androgynous characters with limbs entwined, flanked by a dog and dolphins who jump among serene ocean waves. This peaceful view is counteracted by the image of a mushroom cloud bursting on the horizon, which renders the protective embrace of the humans and animals especially poignant and mysterious. Expanding on themes of melancholy and allegory present throughout Imhof’s oeuvre, the works on view at TEFAF New York exhibit the artist’s compelling synthesis.
Anne Imhof
TEFAF New York 2025
May 9th–13th, 2025
Sprüth Magers Booth: 306
About the artist
Anne Imhof (*1978) lives and works in Berlin and Los Angeles. In March 2025, her largest performative work to date, DOOM: House of Hope, premiered at Park Avenue Armory, New York, and later this year a solo exhibition will open at Serralves Museum of Contemporary Art, Porto. Imhof’s work has been the subject of recent monographic exhibitions at Kunsthaus Bregenz (2024), Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam (2022), Palais de Tokyo, Paris (2021), Tate Modern, London (2019), The Art Institute of Chicago (2019), the German Pavilion at the 57th International Art Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia (2017), Hamburger Bahnhof, Berlin (2016), Kunsthalle Basel (2016), MoMA PS1, New York (2015), Carré d’Art – Musée d’Art Contemporain de Nîmes (2014), and Portikus, Frankfurt am Main (2013). Her work has also been featured in numerous group exhibitions, including at Aichi Triennale, Aichi Prefecture (2022), Kunstmuseum Winterthur (2022), Tai Kwun, Hong Kong (2019), La Biennale de Montréal (2016), Palais de Tokyo, Paris (2015), the Centre Pompidou, Paris (2015), and the Museum für Moderne Kunst, Frankfurt am Main (2014). She represented Germany at the 2017 Venice Biennale, where she was awarded the Golden Lion for Best National Participation and won the Absolut Art Award (2017) and the Preis der Nationalgalerie (2015). Imhof was a guest professor and artist-in residence at the Akademie der Bildenden Künste, Munich (2015) and a visiting artist at Städelschule, Frankfurt am Main, Yale University, New Haven, and the ArtCenter College of Design, Pasadena, among others.
