Fun ist ein Stahlbad, Anne Imhof's first solo exhibition in Portugal, brings together a collection of works—most of which are unpublished and were conceived specifically for the Serralves Museum.

A large-scale sculpture, installed in the Ulmeiro Courtyard, serves as an anchor point and establishes a dialogue with Álvaro Siza's architecture, extending into the interior of the museum. Along the way, sculptures, paintings, and moving image works evoke states of abandonment, the fragility of modernity, and the restless atmosphere of a world marked by environmental precariousness and diffuse forms of anguish. Moments of emptiness emerge as thresholds: spaces where what remains unfulfilled becomes briefly visible.

Imhof's sculptural approach plays simultaneously with the literal and the metaphorical. Here, the "steel bath" functions as a material and conceptual axis—echoing his interest in bodies, resistance, and the pressures that define contemporary life. His practice also absorbs the affective field of youth and queer culture, reflecting the urgency and vulnerability of existing today in an environment marked by danger, uncertainty, and intensified modes of exposure. This dimension is equally present in her performances, often constructed with the scale and intensity of a concert lasting several hours: immersive, suspended between joy and tragedy, and attentive to the way each person navigates desire, visibility, and emotional precariousness.

Awarded the Golden Lion at the Venice Biennale (2017), Anne Imhof has developed a unique practice that crosses performance, sculpture, painting, installation, and film. Her work examines relationships of power, control, spectacularization, and image saturation in systems increasingly marked by surveillance and social pressure.

The title of the exhibition recovers an expression from Adorno and Horkheimer in Dialectic of Enlightenment (1947), where the authors analyze how fun, once converted into a commodity, intertwines with subtle mechanisms of discipline—a tension between promise and hardening that resonates obliquely throughout the entire project.

The exhibition is organized by the Serralves Foundation — Museum of Contemporary Art, curated by Inês Grosso, chief curator of the Serralves Museum, and coordinated by Filipa Loureiro, responsible for temporary exhibitions. The project also benefited from the collaboration of architect Andrea Faraguna and the support of the Sprüth Magers gallery and the artist's studio.