From December 12, 2025 to April 19, 2026, the Serralves Museum of Contemporary Art in Porto will host Fun ist ein Stahlbad, the first solo exhibition in Portugal by Anne Imhof. The exhibition marks a new chapter in the career of the German artist, winner of the Golden Lion at the Venice Biennale in 2017, and presents a multifaceted set of works spanning performance, sculpture, painting, installation, and film, addressing the tensions, power structures, and forms of disquiet that characterize contemporaneity. The exhibition is largely composed of newly produced works conceived specifically for the museum and the Fundação de Serralves campus, a 45-acre area where the museum’s architecture dialogues continuously with the landscape of the park. The exhibition project is curated by Inês Grosso, chief curator of the Serralves Museum of Contemporary Art, and is developed in close relationship with the spaces designed by Álvaro Siza, a central element in Imhof’s approach to the project.
“We have been collaborating with Anne Imhof and her studio on this project for more than two years,” says Inês Grosso, “and it is particularly significant that this exhibition, composed mainly of new works, including large-scale sculptures and a new work created especially for the Park, is taking place in Serralves. It has been many years since the last time a female artist was commissioned to create a work conceived specifically for the Park, which reinforces both the importance of this project and the significance of this moment. Imhof is one of the most important artists of her generation; the way her practice spans performance, film, music, sculpture, painting, and installation directly testifies to Serralves’ ongoing commitment to interdisciplinary work. This exhibition marks a new phase in her practice, more sober and rigorous, placing sculpture and its relationship to architecture at the center of the visitor’s experience and opening a critical confrontation with the present, in a world marked by renewed uncertainty and instability.”
The title Fun ist ein Stahlbad refers directly to Dialectics of the Enlightenment by Theodor W. Adorno and Max Horkheimer, published in 1947. In the text, the philosophers analyze the concept of fun in modern society, arguing that it has lost its function as a space of freedom and turned into a more discreet form of control. The tension between the promise of emancipation and the disillusionment of reality forms the conceptual core of the exhibition and runs through all the works presented. The exhibition includes a series of site-specific works, including large-scale sculptures and paintings, and is structured around a new monumental installation: a steel swimming pool about 18 meters long, made on commission and buried in the grounds of the Pátio do Ulmeiro, outside the museum. The work establishes a direct connection between outdoor and indoor space, extending from the park to the galleries and fully activating the patio, designed by Siza as a transition zone between building and landscape. Within this context, sculptures and paintings address themes such as abandonment, fragility and a widespread feeling of emptiness related to war and states that do not respect human life.
The works in the exhibition also include Citizen (2025), a new four-channel film work premiered at Serralves. The film involves performers, actors, musicians and dancers and is set on the stage of DOOM, Anne Imhof’s production presented in early 2025 at New York’s Park Avenue Armory. In this new version, however, the stage architecture dissolves into an undefined environment, described as a house of hope. The project was developed in close collaboration with architect Andrea Faraguna and was produced with the support of Sprüth Magers Gallery and the artist’s studio.
Anne Imhof was born in 1978 in Gießen, Germany. In 2022 she was listed among the “25 most influential women” by the Financial Times. She completed her studies at the Städelschule in Frankfurt am Main in 2012. In 2017 she represented Germany at the 57th Venice Biennale with FAUST, receiving the Golden Lion for Best National Participation; the work was later included among the “25 Best Works of the 21st Century” by Frieze. In 2025 he presented the performance DOOM at the Park Avenue Armory in New York, which was received with great critical acclaim. He has had solo exhibitions at Tate Modern in London (2019), Palais de Tokyo in Paris (2021), Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam (2022), and Kunsthaus Bregenz (2024). He lives and works between Berlin and New York.
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| Anne Imhof at Serralves Museum: first solo show in Portugal with Fun ist ein Stahlbad |
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