Wish You Were Gay

Kunsthaus Bregenz is delighted to announce Wish You Were Gay by Anne Imhof. Wish You Were Gay is a deeply personal survey presenting several new bodies of work that reflect on and further develop a number of core elements that have constituted Imhof’s repertoire from the outset. Throughout the exhibition, Imhof explores notions of finitude, reality and artifice, chance and fate, absence and presence, set against a backdrop of postapocalyptic isolation. Wish You Were Gay encompasses all-new sculpture, painting, sound, and a series of six never-before-seen video works in which the artist revisits early material from 2001-03, a crucial moment of transition in the artist’s life and work. At that time, Imhof’s life and work were closely linked and at times indistinguishable, imbuing the present exhibition with a distinctly biographical note and touching on notions of chosen family, a reality for many queer people. With the advent of handheld digital camcorders – which allowed the screen to be flipped for the first time, an early precursor to today’s ever-present front-facing cameras – Imhof used this nascent technology as a mirror recording device, before which she performed movements and gestures, animating and setting the scene. Using her body as a medium, alongside other makeshift means such as borrowed guitars and amplifiers, and recording songs and her voice as a means of finding it, she created art with her community friends, lovers, collaborators – engaging the raw materials of life as it unfolded. These video works convey an underlying sense of urgency, embodying force through insistence and presence, manifested in continuous rehearsal and improvisation. Over the next two decades, Imhof wove these elements – via countless mirrorings, doubles, and variations of the motifs originating from this formative period – into a profound practice of movement that places the body at its center. Raw moments are at times slowed down in a surreal manner, brought to a stillness full of tension and potential for explosive action, something that returns in her idiosyncratic performance pieces enacted through others and informs her sculptural and painting practice.