Editorial
Audio Tour: Isa Genzken: Retrospective
Isa Genzken is one of the most important and influential female sculptors of our time. Yet, although she had a solo show at Chicago’s Renaissance Society, in 1992, she has never had a large-scale retrospective in an American museum. This exhibition of work by the Berlin-based German artist, organized jointly by MCA Chicago, the Museum of Modern Art in New York, and the Dallas Museum of Art, seeks to correct that oversight, introducing American audiences to the breadth of Genzken’s 30-plus-year career.
This exhibition encompasses the artist’s work in all media, produced over the past four decades. Divided into chronological sections and arranged thematically within those sections, the exhibition presents these major works and series as nodal points that signal new phases or chapters in the artist’s oeuvre. Together with the accompanying catalogue, which will place Genzken’s work in an art historical context as well as trace her influence on an international array of sculptors working today, the exhibition secures Genzken’s legacy as a transgenerational force in international contemporary art.
Hear from MCA Pritzker Director Madeleine Grynsztejn, and the exhibition organizers—Director Sabine Breitwieser (Museum der Moderne Salzburg), James W. Alsdorf Chief Curator Michael Darling (MCA Chicago), Hoffman Family Senior Curator of Contemporary Art Jeffrey Grove (Dallas Museum of Art), and Curator Laura Hoptman (MoMA)—as they guide you through Isa Genzken: Retrospective.
Introduction
Madeleine Grynsztejn: Welcome to Isa Genzken: Retrospective. I’m Madeleine Grynsztejn, Pritzker Director of the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago. It’s my pleasure to guide you through the exhibition, the first major American retrospective of the work of one of the world’s most influential contemporary artists.
On your tour today, you’ll also hear from co-organizers of the exhibition: Sabine Breitwieser, Director of the Museum of Modern Art Salzburg; Michael Darling, James W. Alsdorf Chief Curator at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago; Jeffrey Grove, Senior Curator of Special Projects and Research at the Dallas Museum of Art; and Laura Hoptman, Curator of Painting and Sculpture, The Museum of Modern Art. Laura and Michael.
Laura Hoptman: Genzken’s career spans from the middle of the 1970s up until today encompassing an enormous variety of forms with central themes that continue to be developed throughout the 40 years of her creative life.
And these themes include a deep devotion to the notion of architecture in an urban landscape—that is, the interplay between the human form and the architectural form—as well as the fabric of urban life and how it can penetrate into cultural or artistic life.
Michael Darling: Isa Genzken’s work is prime material for an exhibition like this, where we’re looking at the whole arc of an artist’s career, because what you will find is not a sameness from start to finish, but an incredible amount of diversity.
Ellipsoids and Hyperbolos, 1976–82
Madeleine Grynsztejn: The sculptures on this platform are among the earliest Isa Genzken exhibited. She worked with a physicist and a carpenter to produce these highly finished, precise shapes from drawings plotted on a computer. Sabine.
Sabine Breitwieser: The artist, by creating these extremely long, slim, and curved-shaped sculptures, forces you to walk around, which makes you end in a kind of dialogue with the sculptures, with the space, but one also enters in a dialogue with time; the time you need to explore these works.
There are two type of forms. One is ellipsoid. So this is a form which touches the ground only in the middle, and the rest is like floating. And the other type, hyperbolos, which are constructed in the opposite way, so they have a slim middle piece which is floating in the air and they touch the ground or have contact with the ground on the outer edges.
Ohr (Ear), 1980
Michael Darling: This photograph, Ear, is from a series of photographs that Isa Genzken made in 1980 – both in New York, photographing friends of hers and women she encountered on the street. And as you can see, she’s blown it up to monumental scale, so this picture of an ear becomes as much a sculptural study as an actual portrait of someone. This one I think is also quite unique in that it actually is a portrait of Isa Genzken’s own ear.
Madeleine Grynsztejn: In the late 1970s and early 1980s, Genzken typically exhibited her Ear photographs with Ellipsoids and Hyperbolos, and with her readymade sculpture World Receiver, the radio that you see in this gallery. Michael.
MD: I think the combination of these three types of work shows an early interest on Genzken’s part in mixing between different media and not being beholden to one type of practice or type of tradition.
MG: Genzken was very interested in engineering and sound when she created her ear pieces and hi-fi photos, also on view here.
MD: I personally think that there’s something of interest here, too, in the intangible quality of sound as it moves through space that she was interested in, where sculpture and art, for that matter, might exist in ways that are harder to perceive visually and might actually be most perceptible in an aural realm.
Weltempfanger (World Receiver), 1982
Madeleine Grynsztejn: Isa Genzken was drawn to the perfection of mass-produced technologies, particularly sound equipment. She once declared, “A sculpture must be at least as modern as the most modern hi-fi systems.” Michael.
Michael Darling: This piece is called Weltempfänger, which, translated to English, means “world receiver.” It’s obviously not a piece that she made herself, but rather is a commercially available, rather high-end radio that would’ve been able to receive all kinds of radio signals coming in from all over the world. I think that alone is what makes this piece interesting, because around this time, she was thinking about sound, thinking about sound waves, how they travel through the world.
Mein Gehirn (My Brain), 1984
Sabine Breitwieser: With the plasterworks, Genzken surprises us with a radically different approach. While she was delegating a part of the production of her earlier sculptures to technicians and craftsmen, she suddenly started to create small-scale sculptures just using her two hands.
This was an examination of herself, as we can read from the titles of these plasterworks. Some of these works refer directly to a self-portrait, as she calls them, or even to My Brain, to pick another title. And this is an exemplary work, My Brain, because it’s made out of plaster, but with the sweepings of her studio floor.
Bild, 1989
Madeleine Grynsztejn: In the 1980s, Genzken turned her attention to working with concrete, a material that she borrowed from architecture. Sabine.
Sabine Breitwieser: Using concrete as a material made her start a deeper examination of architecture as a basic statement made by engineers rather than by fashionable architects.
Each layer was created over the day and could dry over the night, and step-by-step the artist was casting her work. Similar to some of the plaster works, one can still see traces of the making of the material and the forms the artist used when casting them. What is also visible is that these sculptures are made in parts; in dimensions the artist was able to handle by herself in the studio.
MG: When cast at a small scale, concrete is actually quite fragile.
SB: And the works can easily break, especially when often reassembled. However, this ruin-like esthetic is something the artist is welcoming and even underlining.
This resembles the architecture in German cities that largely were rebuilt after the war in the typical architecture of the 1960s, made out of concrete, a type of architecture much in controversy in relation to utopian ideas of modernity.
Basic Research, 1989–91
Michael Darling: Isa Genzken is primarily known as a sculptor, but there are some very distinct bodies of painting that she’s made over the course of her career. One of the very first series is called Basic Research.
And they were all made in a very similar process. She would lay canvas down on her studio floor, not bothering to sweep up the floor, so whatever junk was laying around on the floor was part of the composition as she then rubbed oil paint onto the canvas, picking up all of the texture of the floor underneath her. These paintings really have an evidence of the hand. You can see the swipes of the squeegee across the canvas that really reveals how these pictures were made. And the title alone, Basic Research, I think, kind of gives you a sense of materiality that she’s trying to capture here; that these are recordings, in a way, of the world around her, and her studio in particular.
X-Ray photos, 1992
Jeffrey Grove: If she hadn’t become such an important sculptor, she would have made an incredible actress. You see already in this body of work Genzken performing for the viewer.
It’s interesting that she did choose to have X-rays made of herself when they were in no way medically necessitated. And not only is that sort of a risky endeavor to embark on, but it also is absolutely illegal. And so there’s a certain complicity with the doctor who allowed it to happen that I think goes to something else that I note in Genzken’s work often, is a wry sense of humor that borders on the diabolical.
X and X-motif MLR, both 1992
Madeleine Grynsztejn: Until now, Genzken’s only other substantial exhibition in the United States was in 1992, in Chicago. Michael.
Michael Darling: During Isa Genzken’s preparation for that exhibition, she traveled to Chicago and was incredibly influenced by the architecture, which of course is one of its calling cards.
MG: She was especially struck by the John Hancock Center, located adjacent to the MCA, with its X-shaped braces from top to bottom.
MD: And this X-form shows up in very different artworks by Isa Genzken over the years. We first start to see it immediately in 1992 in artworks that she created in and after Chicago, including the sculpture that’s just titled X, which, as you can see, is a cube that is formed by these dramatic X shapes in resin and steel.
MG: The X-form is also featured in related paintings that are collectively titled MLR, or “more light research.”
MD: The title comes from the German poet Goethe, who, on his death bed apparently uttered, “More light.” There’s a mystery and a lyricism to these paintings that I think must connect back in some way to those words of Goethe, this kind of tenuousness between something becoming and something maybe disappearing.
Bismarckstrasse, 1994
Sabine Breitwieser: Genzken became interested to reveal more of the inside of her sculptures, how they’re made. At the same time, she had this problem of disintegration of the concrete, so she started to use epoxy resin, a transparent material, to cast sculpture and show the inside, in fact—something architecture is usually hiding. The inside steel structure allowed her to create even more complex, fragile forms.
While we can also look at the painting like as a window to the artist’s idea, a sculpture representing a window even emphasizes this idea and turns the art object into an architectural viewing device.
I Love New York, Crazy City, 1995–6
Madeleine Grynsztejn: Genzken’s romance with New York City started on her first visit as a teenager, in the 1960s. In the mid-1990s, she began staying for extended periods. Laura.
Laura Hoptman: And one of the first objects that she made as a result of these trips was called I Love New York, Crazy City. What it is comprised of are all the paper objects that Genzken collected during her crazy days and even crazier nights in New York, which include bills from hotels that begin with the Waldorf Astoria and end with a youth hostel somewhere downtown, bar tabs, citations from hotel security, handbills given to her for discos, and the like.
You can see when you look at the work some of the gritty, underground and underbelly of New York that you could have experienced walking the streets of downtown but you cannot experience today.
MG: This is the first time Genzken used collage, and the juxtaposition of found objects would become her primary artistic language—one she still uses today, in ever more elaborate forms.
Columns, 1990–2000
Jeffrey Grove: The columns are maybe one of the first instances we see of Genzken specifically anthropomorphizing the sculptures. By naming them as she’s done—Kai, Daniel, Isa—she’s conferring on them this human aspect. So whether we would infer that from looking at the object or not, she’s already predetermining that we’ll receive it that way.
Genzken stated that in deciding to name these sculptures, one of the reasons was memory, so that each time she recalled one titled Kai or Daniel, she would remember the materials of which that work was composed.
Clearly one of the most obvious references that the columns make is to architecture, from ancient architecture to present day monolithic skyscrapers. And of course Genzken loves New York. She loves the skyscrapers of New York and of cities throughout the world. These columns are directly related to that. And I think they’re monolithic monuments at the same time that they’re very human objects. So, unlike many bodies of Genzken’s work, it is a dividing line between the social and the personal.
Fuck the Bauhaus, 2000
Madeleine Grynsztejn: This is the first instance in which Genzken creates an ensemble of assemblages. Laura.
Laura Hoptman: Fuck the Bauhaus, New Buildings for New York was the first possibility that Genzken had to make a commission in New York City that would be shown in New York City. Genzken lived in downtown New York near Wall Street and gathered materials from the streets, everything from the orange caution netting that surrounds construction sites to bits of plastic that one can buy at Home Depot.
You know, a building is a building; but it also sits on a street. And this is something that Isa Genzken completely understands. So Fuck the Bauhaus as a group of objects, as an installation, brings the viewer into the streets of New York via the objects that the artist found there.
MG: Although they may seem makeshift, these structures still convey Genzken’s interest in, and understanding of, architectural form.
LH: Therein lies the partial explanation for the crazy title, which sends up the great contribution specifically of German architecture to modernism and American modern architecture and also, in a way, gives a back-handed homage to it.
These works reward close looking. In Fuck the Bauhaus No. 2, at the very top is a tiny silver chain, the kind of thing that you would see hanging from a single light bulb in an unrenovated loft. And this tiny chain serves as a kind of light-hearted extra on a sculpture that really is a commentary on ornament.
On the side is a photograph of a flower. Genzken has said in the past that one of the things that the Bauhaus ignored was the flower, the notion of the ornament.
Empire/Vampire, 2003–4
Madeleine Grynsztejn: Isa Genzken was in New York City on September 11, 2001. This series, called Empire/Vampire Who Kills Death, is related to her experience of the tragic events that she witnessed that day. Laura.
Laura Hoptman: These works are chilling. And although there are clever juxtapositions of objects that we encounter every day—like a rubber duck or a child’s shoe—they eloquently express the terror and the misery of those of us who experienced that moment at that time. In a video that accompanies the sculptures, Genzken takes a video-camera and places it just at eye level and wanders through these tableaus as if we are in some sort of war documentary without narration.
It can be argued that Genzken’s works from the very beginning have narrative content. But it is in the Empire/Vampire series of works that that narrative comes to the fore. Walking through a group of Empire/Vampire sculptures is a definitively cinematic experience, with each sculpture a scene in a terrible unfolding film of war and disaster.
Oil XI, 2007
Madeleine Grynsztejn: Genzken premiered this installation at the 2007 Venice Biennale, an international contemporary art exhibition where she represented Germany. Oil comprises several individual assemblages. The artist employed a variety of materials, including suitcases on wheels, stuffed birds, and posters, among many other elements. Jeffrey.
Jeffrey Grove: Genzken’s sculpture is always intended to be experienced in the round. And increasingly there’s a sort of cinematic drama that she’s searching for in creating these assemblages that become stage sets. But they’re not stage sets that we’re meant to view from a distance. We’re meant to be not only the audience, but the actors performing the work.
It’s, I believe, a very present day consumer culture mindset, that the world is producing so much material, how do I use it to make a statement about that very condition. So she not only takes what one would call found objects, but they’re really purchased products. She doesn’t so much find them in the street as go into do-it-yourself stores and buy them.
Ground Zero, 2007
Madeleine Grynsztejn: The series, Ground Zero, is made of a combination of inexpensive materials and high-end design objects. The sculptures have a drastically different scale than those made in the preceding years. Genzken created this series in response to an architectural competition to build a new landmark and memorial site at Ground Zero. Laura.
Laura Hoptman: Instead of an ensemble of sculptural objects, it really is an installation. You walk in and you have a direct contact with each of the sculptures, which are person-sized. The theme is New York City and refers to the tragedy of September 11.
And each building that Genzken is suggesting is very specific. There is a parking garage, there is a church, there is a fashion store. And most interestingly, at least for me, there is a disco. So, in other words, what Genzken is suggesting for the Ground Zero site is a place for the kind of enjoyment that she directly connects with New York City—that is, song, dance, fashion, and joie de vivre.
There is a lucidity and organization in the objects that have been gathered from daily life, a clarity of narrative, a lightness in fact, a way of translating the present that is unique to Genzken’s vision but also very much about us, about what we experience in the streets of New York and in Berlin.
