Anne Imhof’s largest project in the US premiered this week at the Park Avenue Armory in New York, taking over the venue’s vast Wade Thompson Drill Hall with a three-hour long performance and installation curated by Klaus Biesenbach. The immersive show, DOOM: House of Hope (until 12 March), envelopes visitors in a bleak realm of dance, sound and sculptural forms in keeping with the Golden Lion-winning German artist’s stylised visual universe.
Moody and unpredictable, Imhof’s take-over contrasts the Gothic Revival former armory’s imposing interior with her uber-blasé orchestration of contemporary corporeality, conveying a mood of detachment, unpredictability and self-examination. More than 15 dancers cut through the roving audience within an expansive layout that resembles a high school gym with a time-ticking Jumbotron that hangs overhead, counting down to the end of the show. Two stages decorated with silver balloons and mylar curtains host intermittent live musical performances, while other performers climb over or sit atop 26 black Cadillac Escalades.
Anne Imhof’s DOOM at Park Avenue Armory. Photo: Nadine Fraczkowski. Courtesy the artist, Galerie Buchholz, Sprüth Magers, and Park Avenue Armory.
Beyond the dimmed lights and the gloomy atmosphere, however, Imhof is inviting viewers to look through the grunge for the project’s titular hope. “This piece is my love letter to everyone who shares the belief that love is the ultimate universal power, much more powerful than racist and misogynist politics, laws against women, gay and trans people, and all minorities,” she tells The Art Newspaper. The Berlin- and Los Angeles-based artist sees the show’s collaborative nature as a testimony to the optimism underlying its sleek aesthetic. “There is a shared longing for beauty and keeping the ones safe that are beautiful and special to us and our respective communities.”
Imhof’s covertly upbeat message, wrapped in an elaborately austere wardrobe, is conveyed through both contemporary iconography and historical sampling. DOOM includes passages and a loose narrative framework from William Shakespeare’s Romeo & Juliet. Two performers reenact a knife fight scene from the German auteur Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s 1982 adaptation of Jean Genet’s transgressive gay romance Querelle. Other performers deliver balletic bits of choreography from George Balanchine and Jerome Robbins. Imhof also pays homage to contemporary art, including a fleeting reference to Tino Sehgal’s The Kiss (2003), where two dancers perform while keeping their lips locked in a kiss, as well as Bruce Nauman’s Slow Angle Walk (Beckett Walk) (1968), which features the artist enacting a rigid walking routine.
Anne Imhof’s DOOM at Park Avenue Armory. Photo: Nadine Fraczkowski. Courtesy the artist, Galerie Buchholz, Sprüth Magers, and Park Avenue Armory.
According to Biesenbach, who calls the project a “tableau vivant”, Imhof’s disparate references reflect the show’s belief in both humanity’s creative perseverance and the potency of pluralities over dualities. “There is a trans-generational and fluid multiplicity in Anne’s way of bringing ideas and collaborators together,” the Neue Nationalgalerie director tells The Art Newspaper.
The former curator-at-large at the Museum of Modern in New York organised that institution’s blockbuster 2010 genre-defining Marina Abramović retrospective, The Artist Is Present, and is still awed by the “unpredictability” of performance art. “A performance curator is a catalyst of their own source, but there is a fine line between the invitation to the artist, the resource and what will come out of them,” he says, adding that he appreciates Imhof’s openness to let others define their own bearings within her projects: “Anne is fascinating to collaborate with because she encourages and liberates everyone within her clear vision.”
Sharleen Chidiac (guitar), Eva Bella Kaufman (drums), Lia Wang (vocals) and Jakob Eilinghoff (bass) in Anne Imhof’s DOOM at Park Avenue Armory. Photo: Nadine Fraczkowski. Courtesy the artist, Galerie Buchholz, Sprüth Magers, and Park Avenue Armory.
Since winning the top honour at the 2017 Venice Biennale for her project in the German pavilion, Faust, Imhof has had institutional solo shows at Stedelijk Museum, Tate Modern and the Palais de Tokyo. Collaborations with Burberry and Balenciaga, plus a studiously grungy public persona have helped the 45-year-old artist amass a cult following in the sector and beyond.
She considers DOOM to be something of a departure from her past projects due to its sole emphasis on performance “with no exhibition attached and focused entirely on the live aspect of my work”, she says. “Now is the time when storytelling in different ways to tell our respective stories is most important.”
Anne Imhof’s DOOM: House of Hope, until 12 March, Park Avenue Armory, New York
