Anne Imhof: Fun ist ein Stahlbad

Fun ist ein Stahlbad, is Anne Imhof’s first solo exhibition in Portugal, spotlighting the 2017 Golden Lion-winner’s searing multidisciplinary practice across performance, sculpture, painting, and installation that explores the anxieties, power structures, and tensions shaping contemporary life. 

The exhibition presents a substantial body of newly produced works conceived specifically for the Serralves Foundation’s Museum and unique, 45-acre campus, where the building’s architecture is seamlessly integrated into the surrounding landscape of Serralves Park.  It is curated by Inês Grosso, Chief Curator of the Serralves Museum of Contemporary Art. 

The exhibition’s title, Fun ist ein Stahlbad, draws from Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer’s book The Dialectic of Enlightenment (1947), in which the philosophers argue that “fun” in the modern world ceases to function as a space for freedom and instead mirrors more discreet forms of control. This central tension—between the promise of freedom and the disappointments of reality—is the conceptual core of Imhof’s presentation. 

Fun ist ein Stahlbad is comprised of several site-specific artworks, such as large-scale sculptures, paintings, and is anchored by a newly commissioned, 60-foot-long steel swimming pool, buried into the grounds of the Pátio do Ulmeiro, just outside the Museum. Engaging directly with the Museum’s distinctive, Álvaro Siza-designed architecture, the monumental installation unfolds from the outside into the Museum’s interior galleries, fully activating the patio, a space designed by Siza to draw the surrounding landscape into the Museum. Within it, several sculptures and paintings explore themes of abandonment, fragility, and the pervasive sense of emptiness of war and states that don’t respect human life. 

Additional works on view include Citizen (2025), a new 4-channel film work premiering at Serralves. Featuring performers, actors, musicians, and dancers, the work unfolds the stage of Anne Imhof’s DOOM shown in New York earlier this year at the Park Avenue Armory, yet on screen that architecture dissolves into an undefined “house of hope.”

Inês Grosso, Chief Curator, Serralves Museum of Contemporary Art, said, “We have been working with Anne Imhof and her studio on this project for more than two years, and it is particularly meaningful that this exhibition—composed mainly of new works, including large-scale sculptures and a new piece created specifically for the Park —takes place at Serralves. It has been many years since a woman artist was commissioned to create a work conceived especially for the Park, which reinforces both the importance of this project and the significance of this moment.” 

The curator added that “Imhof is one of the most important artists of her generation; the way her practice moves across performance, film, music, sculpture, painting, and installation speaks directly to Serralves’ longstanding commitment to interdisciplinary work. This exhibition marks a new phase in her practice, more restrained and more rigorous, placing sculpture and the relationship with architecture at the center of the visitor’s experience, and opening a critical engagement with the present, in a world marked by renewed uncertainty and instability.”

The exhibition is organized by the Serralves Foundation—Museum of Contemporary Art, curated by Inês Grosso, chief curator of the Serralves Museum.

The project also benefited from the collaboration of architect Andrea Faraguna and the support of the Sprüth Magers gallery and the artist's studio.