Isa Genzken

 
A student at the dynamic Düsseldorf Academy during the 1960s, Genzken has since consistently challenged Modernist imperatives in her explorations of the relationships between public and private space, artistic autonomy and collective experience. The artist's oeuvre, which can be subsumed under the term “sculptural,” is characterized by extreme contrasts between the individual stages of development. However, the characterization of Isa Genzken as a traditional sculptor, along with the usual remarks concerning the heterogeneity of her methods (photography, video, film, collages, and collage books), veils a stronger internal logic. While the work demonstrates a continuous examination of the classic themes of sculpture (the ordering of mass and volume; the relation between construction, surface design, and materials; the conception of and relation between objects, space, and the viewer), what the “traditional sculptor” label cannot quite capture is Genzken's remarkable ruthlessness: the manner in which her work underlines the rejection of traditional understandings of sculpture and space while reflecting on and disclosing the specific circumstances of their production and reception.
 
Isa Genzken - Initiales - Initiales I.G.
2018
French edition
Initiales
ENSBA Lyon (Lyon National School of Art)
Initiales, the art and research magazine published by the École nationale supérieure des beaux-arts de Lyon, dedicates its eleventh issue to a major figure of contemporary sculpture, Isa Genzken.
Isa Genzken - I\'m Isa Genzken, the Only Female Fool
2014
bilingual edition (English / German)
Sternberg Press - Monographs and artists' books
sold out
New monograph.
Isa Genzken - I Love New York, Crazy City
2006
English edition
JRP|Editions - Artists' books & editions
sold out
This monumental printed project (500 pages, 40 cm, 4 kg) demonstrates, by publishing for the first time three collage books realized by Isa Genzken, to what extent the artist is interested in the ways in which aesthetic styles embody and enforce political and social ideologies.
Isa Genzken - Urlaub
2000
bilingual edition (English / German)
Sternberg Press - Monographs and artists' books
Urlaub constitutes Genzken's multilayered inquiry into the meaning of work and leisure.


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