Anne Imhof returns to Sprüth Magers with Citizen, a new solo exhibition opening during London Gallery Weekend.
Building on ideas developed in her recent projects DOOM: House of Hope and Fun ist ein Stahlbad at the Serralves Museum of Contemporary Art in Porto earlier this year, the exhibition brings together new large-scale Wave paintings alongside a four-channel film, crowd barrier sculptures, oil pastel drawings on canvas and bronze reliefs.
Across painting, sculpture, film and installation, Imhof continues her ongoing exploration of the body and its relationship to movement, visibility and control. Questions of how bodies occupy space, how they are observed and how fleeting experiences can be translated into lasting form run throughout the exhibition.
A monumental new diptych depicting a head rendered through dense accumulative mark-making pushes Imhof’s figurative language into new territory. Echoes of the medieval danse macabre also surface within the exhibition, opening onto broader reflections on instability, mortality and the challenge of giving fixed form to constantly shifting states.
Known for works that merge performance, choreography, painting, music and installation, Imhof has become one of the defining artists of her generation. With Citizen, those concerns continue to evolve across media, creating an exhibition suspended between monumentality, disappearance and performance itself.
Anne Imhof, Citizen June 5th–August 1st, 2026, Sprüth Magers, London
Public Reception: Thursday, June 4th, 6PM–8PM
About the artist
Anne Imhof has emerged over the past decade as one of the most influential artists of her generation. Based between Berlin and New York, her multidisciplinary practice spans performance, choreography, painting, drawing, music, sculpture, installation and film.
Although her work moves fluidly across mediums, painting remains central to how Imhof approaches image-making. Her performances often operate as living tableaux in which bodies, objects and gestures are choreographed into psychologically charged environments. Across these works, figures drift between intimacy and detachment, action and passivity, creating atmospheres that feel simultaneously ritualistic and cinematic.
Imhof first gained international recognition with Faust at the 57th Venice Biennale in 2017, where she was awarded the Golden Lion for Best National Participation. Since then, expansive projects including Rage, Deal, Angst and Sex have established a visual language that merges references to art history, subculture, commodity aesthetics and collective ritual.
Born in 1978, Imhof developed her early artistic practice in Frankfurt, teaching herself drawing and music before studying at the Städelschule. Her work continues to explore questions surrounding the body, control, vulnerability, desire and image production, often blurring distinctions between performance and object, presence and absence, life and representation.
