Isa Genzken
Ohren (detail), 1981, photo, 72.7 x 50 cm, Collection Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam
Glamcult loves German artist Isa Genzken for her unorthodox vision of the world around us. For her radical use of materials usually not connected with established art (graffiti spray paint, epoxy, window dummies). For her seemingly nonchalant attitude towards putting together her work. For her passion for all things unpolished and underground. The innovation and invention of her work, rich in autobiographical elements and subtle comments on society, have served as a source of inspiration for generations of artists and art lovers. Despite being schooled as a sculptor, Genzken has never felt constrained in her use of media. Rather, she’s always challenged the concept of sculpture, scanning the boundaries of the discipline while working around themes such as big-city life, fashion, architecture, the human body, subcultures and (dance) music. She started to experiment in the 1970s, while studying art history and fine art, with computer-calculated
abstract sculptures, followed by wooden spear-shaped objects (ellipsoids and hyperbolas) and sculptures made from unusual materials (concrete and epoxy). She really challenged the concept of sculpture with her more recent, complex narrative collages and assemblagetableaux integrating everyday objects, which over the last ten years have brought a renewed sense of urgency to her work. It comes as no surprise that someone with a CV like Genzken’s has been featured at Documenta in Kassel (2002), the Venice Biennale (German Pavilion, 2007) and had several retrospectives in Europe. It was the city of New York, however, that showed her first comprehensive survey exhibition—at the MoMA in 2013. It’s not especially surprising given that despite being based in Berlin and studying both there and at academies in three other German cities (Hamburg, Cologne and Düsseldorf), Genzken has
always felt attached to New York, travelling there twice a year before settling in the Big Apple in the Nineties for some time. Off the back of her stay, Genzken created the book I love New York, Crazy City, providing us with a weird and wonderful guidebook for the city that never sleeps and a much-appreciated look into her private life through all kinds of posters, takeaway menus, torn pages from magazines, notes, addresses, hotel bills and photos taken of her during her stay (by, among others, none other than photographer Wolfgang Tillmans, a kindred spirit and close friend). In the 1980s, while she was in New York and lacking a studio to work from, Genzken started to take photos of the ears of women on the streets of New York. In an interview with Wolfgang Tillmans she said: “Not a single woman said no. Because I didn’t ask for their face, but for something largely anonymous… The women always said, ‘What, my ear?
19
Sure!’ Everyone thought it was great.” Genzken loved the different shapes she saw, and the way people expressed their identity through them with jewellery (or the lack of). Next to “unknown” people in the street, Genzken also portrayed her own ear and that of Sonic Youth’s Kim Gordon. By enlarging a single, specific feature and positioning it so that it receives full attention, it could be argued that Genzken turned the ear into a model for a sculpture. Ears not only caught the artist’s attention for their beautiful form, but also because they connect with two prominent themes in her work: 1, they pick up signals and 2, they serve as a window between inside and out (of the human body in this case).
Gc Retrospective