Thy Énergies, 29. March – 1. June 2025, Kunsthal Thy, Hurup Thy

Photographer: Jacob Friis-Holm Nielsen

When you enter Judith Hopf’s installation Thy Énergies, you encounter three temporary walls set up like a film set inside the barn of an old homestead. Together, they form a long space, with an abstract “all-over” mural on its walls. Blue, graphic strokes depict a stylized rain. On the front wall of the room, there is another corresponding wall piece, evoking sun rays with simple lines. Weather—this “crypto-demonic” phenomenon—is used as an aesthetic device in this exhibition.

The depicted ratio of rain to sun roughly corresponds to the actual weather conditions in the Thy region. Here, people experience potentially nine months of rain and three months of sun. However, perceptions are shifting, as we can observe: What was once called “bad weather”—rain—has now become a welcome event, replacing what was previously considered “good weather”—sunshine. The categories of weather are fundamentally wavering. Paradoxically, the sun and its warm, bright energy become both the problem of this transformation and the hope of reversing it: its rays are captured in large solar fields and converted into energy and electricity.

Such “solar panels” are also present in Judith Hopf’s exhibition. Alongside her video work LESS, Hopf engages with the panels that are at the heart of ongoing discussions—ones she
frequently encounters while working at her “rural studio” in northern Brandenburg. In the video LESS (2022), which plays on the back of one of the walls in Kunsthal Thy, snails—the video’s charming protagonists—purposefully crawl toward a solar farm to settle there, with real effects: the panels are actively altered by the snails. And that is precisely Hopf’s point: the appropriation of currently relevant technologies by unexpected, seemingly less significant users, leading to striking results.

Snails are site-loyal, adaptable, and true world champions in energy efficiency. They move forward at 7 cm per minute, a pace that allows them to keep their energy consumption very low. In contrast, humanity’s energy balance appears bleak. Humans are the only living beings that never seem to meet their energy needs—instead, they require more and more energy each year.

For Judith Hopf, the snails’ movements serve as a starting point for addressing this discrepancy. Through her video and “solar panels,” she examines both the seriousness of our current, often-questioned attempts to curb fossil energy consumption and the earnestness with which the snails go about their business. These tireless efforts share a certain idea of fatigue or at least slowness, yet at the same time, an unrelenting optimism that we might still succeed in making our world a better place. Perhaps, however, the snails contribute far more to this effort than we do.

Meanwhile, the sun continues to shine, and the rain continues to fall—outside in reality and inside in abstract line form, on the walls of Kunsthal Thy.

Text: Marina Rüdiger and Judith Hopf