Johan Grimonprez was born in Roeselare, Belgium in 1962. He studied at the School of Visual Arts and attended the Whitney Museum Independent Study Program in New York.
Grimonprez's productions have traveled the main festival circuit from Telluride, Los Angeles, Rio de Janeiro, to Tokyo and Berlin. Curatorial projects were hosted at major exhibitions and museums worldwide such as the Whitney Museum in New York, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Pinakothek der Moderne, Munich and the Tate Modern in London. Grimonprez's work is included in numerous collections such as the Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris, the Kanazawa Art Museum, Japan, the National Gallery, Berlin and the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Denmark. Nominated for the Hugo Boss Award in 2005, Grimonprez is currently a faculty member at the School of Visual Arts (New York). Johan Grimonprez lives and works in Brussels and New York.

Together with Daragh Reeves, media artist Johan Grimonprez conceived the idea of casting Hitchcock look-a-likes, reminiscing Hitchcock's many cameo performances in his own films, such as that of the man who only just catches the bus in North by Northwest. For a moment you see a fat man with a bowler hat, an umbrella and two small dogs, and then you see it: it is Hitchcock himself!