Isa Genzken
Isa Genzken (born 1948, Bad Oldesloe, Schleswig-Holstein) is a contemporary artist who lives and works in Berlin.
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Life and career [edit]
Education [edit]
Genzken studied fine arts and art history with Almir Mavignier at the Hamburg University of Fine Arts[1] from 1969–1971 and the Berlin University of the Arts from 1971–1973. In 1973 she transferred to Arts Academy Düsseldorf[1], where, upon graduating in 1977, she taught sculpture. Genzken married German visual artist Gerhard Richter in 1982. They separated in 1995, and divorced in 2003.
Work [edit]
Although Isa Genzken's primary focus is sculpture, she uses various media including photography, film, video, works on paper and canvas, collages, and books. Her diverse practice draws on the legacies of Constructivism and Minimalism and often involves a critical, open dialogue with Modernist architecture and contemporary visual and material culture. Using plaster, cement, building samples, photographs, and bric-a-brac, Genzken creates architectonic structures that have been described as contemporary ruins. She further incorporates mirrors and other reflective surfaces to literally draw the viewer into her work. The column is a recurring motif for Genzken, a “pure” architectural trope on which to explore relationships between “high art” and the mass-produced products of popular culture.[2]
In 1980, Genzken and Gerhard Richter were commissioned to design the König-Heinrich-Platz underground station in Duisburg; it was only completed in 1992. Between 1986 and 1992, Genzken conceived her series plaster and concrete sculptures to investigate architecture. In 2000, a series of rather roughly patched together architectural models was inscribed with Fuck the Bauhaus. Later, in the series New Buildings for Berlin, which was shown at Documenta 11, Genzken designed architectural visions of glass high-rises.
The project entitled Der Spiegel 1989-1991 is a series of deceptively simple[according to whom?] images comprising 121 reproductions of black and white photographs selected and cut from the influential German newsweekly Der Spiegel. Presented in a non-sequential but methodical manner, each image is glued against a piece of white card and individually mounted in a simple frame. Whilst the images themselves remain caption-less, the dates in the series' titles offer clues about the artist's intentions.[3]
Her paintings of suspended hoops, collectively entiled MLR (More Light Research) (1992), recall gymnastics apparatus caught mid-swing and frozen in time.[4]
One of Genzken's best known works, Rose (1993/7), is a public sculpture of a single long-stemmed rose made from enamelled stainless steel that towers eight metres above Leipzig’s museum district. The artist's first public artwork in the United States, her replica Rose II (2007) was installed outside the New Museum as part of a year-long rotating installation in November 2010.[5]
Genzken has also produced numerous films, including Zwei Frauen im Gefecht, 1974, Chicago Drive, 1992,[6] Meine Großeltern im Bayerischen Wald, 1992, and the video Empire/Vampire, Who Kills Death, 2003.
Since the end of the second half of the 1990s, Genzken has been conceptualizing sculptures and panel paintings in the shape of a bricolage of materials taken from DIY stores and from photographs and newspaper clippings.[7] She often uses materials that underline the temporary character of her works. As part of her deep-set interest in urban space, she also arranges complex, and often disquieting, installations with mannequins, dolls, photographs, and an array of found objects. New Buildings for New York are assembled from found scraps of plastic, metal and pizza-box cardboard.[8] The assemblages from the Empire/Vampire, Who Kills Death series, originally comprising more than twenty sculptures that were created following the attacks of September 11, are combinations of found objects – action figures, plastic vessels, and various elements of consumer detritus – arranged on pedestals in architecturally inspired, post-destruction scenes.[9] Elefant (2006) is a column of cascading vertical blinds festooned with plastic tubes, foil, artificial flowers, fabric and some tiny toy soldiers and Indians.[10] For her installation Oil, the artist transformed the German Pavilion at the 2007 Venice Biennale into a futuristic and morbid Gesamtkunstwerk.
Teaching [edit]
Genzken served as a Guest Professor at Berlin University of the Arts (1990) and at Städelschule, Frankfurt (1991–92).[11]
Exhibitions [edit]
Genzken’s first solo exhibition was held in 1976 at the Konrad Fischer Gallery in Düsseldorf, and her first solo show in the U.S. was mounted by Jack Shainman Gallery, New York, in 1989.[12] Genzken represented Germany at the Venice Biennale in 2007. In 2003, she had already participated in the Venice Biennale and, in 2002, Documenta 11 in Kassel, Germany. She was the subject of a major retrospective in 2009, jointly organized by the Museum Ludwig, Cologne and the Whitechapel Art Gallery, London. Other solo exhibitions in the past decade include Malmö Konsthall, Sweden (2008); the Camden Arts Centre, London (2006); the Photographers' Gallery, London (2005); the Kunsthalle Zürich (2003); and the Lenbachhaus, Munich (2003). Artist Dan Graham included Genzken's work in his "Deep Comedy" show at Marian Goodman Gallery, New York, in 2008.[13] Her recent shows included collaborative work with Kai Althoff[14] and Wolfgang Tillmans, in whose exhibition space "Between Bridges" she exhibited in 2008. She is the subject of Elizabeth Peyton's painting Isa (Isa Genzken 1980) (2010).
Genzken is represented by David Zwirner, New York; Galerie Daniel Buchholz, Cologne [2]; Chantal Crousel, Paris; and Hauser & Wirth, London.
Recognition [edit]
The artist won the International Art Prize (Cultural Donation of SSK Munich) in 2004 and the Wolfgang-Hahn-Prize [3] (Museum Ludwig,[15] Cologne) in 2002.
Collections [edit]
Genzken's work is included in the collections of many institutions internationally, including the Museum of Modern Art, New York; Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh; the Generali Foundation, Vienna; the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, D.C.; the Kemper Art Museum, St. Louis; the Museum Ludwig, Cologne; the Museum Frieder Burda, Baden-Baden; and the Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven.
Isa spending time in New York on September 2005 (photo at right).
Articles [edit]
1 Afterall, Issue 2, 'Isa Genzken' by Christiane Schneider.
References [edit]
- ^ http://www.hfbk-hamburg.de/hfbk_homepage/hfbk_hamburg/website/index.php[dead link]
- ^ Isa Genzken: Kinderschirm (2004) Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles.
- ^ Isa Genzken: Der Spiegel 1989-1991, 7 October - 20 November 2005 Photographers' Gallery, London.
- ^ Isa Genzken, 17 February 2006 - 16 April 2006 Camden Arts Centre, London.
- ^ Isa Genzken: Rose II (2007) New Museum, New York.
- ^ Isa Genzken: Everybody needs at least one window, May 14 – June 28, 1992 Renaissance Society, Chicago.
- ^ Isa Genzken Generali Foundation, Vienna.
- ^ Holland Cotter (July 12, 2002), Architectural Visions Keep Dreamers Awake New York Times.
- ^ Isa Genzken: New Work, February 10 – March 5, 2005 David Zwirner Gallery, New York.
- ^ Roberta Smith (November 30, 2007), In Galleries, a Nervy Opening Volley New York Times.
- ^ Isa Genzken Hauser & Wirth.
- ^ Michael Brenson (December 1, 1989), From Chillida, Pillars Of Energy and Gravity New York Times.
- ^ Deep Comedy, Curated by Dan Graham, June 25 - July 30, 2008 Marian Goodman Gallery, New York.
- ^ Holland Cotter (July 7, 2011), ‘The Phantasm’ New York Times.
- ^ http://www.museenkoeln.de/english/museum-ludwig/[dead link]
