Isa Genzken: Retrospective
Texts by Michael Darling, Jeffrey Grove, Lisa Lee, and Stephanie Weber
Isa Genzken is arguably one of the most important and influential female artists of the past 30 years, yet the breadth of her achievement–which spans sculptures, paintings, photographs, collages, drawings, artist’s books, films, installations, and public works–is still largely unknown in the United States. Published in conjunction with the first comprehensive retrospective of the artist’s epically diverse body of work, this publication encompasses Genzken’s work in all media over the past 40 years and is the most complete monograph on the artist available in English. Genzken has been part of the artistic discourse since she began exhibiting in the mid-1970s, but over the last decade a new generation of artists has been inspired by her radical inventiveness. The past ten years have been particularly productive for Genzken, who has created several bodies of work that have redefined assemblage for a new era. The catalogue presents Genzken’s career, through essays exploring the unfolding of her practice from 1973 until today, as well as an expansive plate section that provides a chronological overview of all her most important bodies of work and key exhibitions.
Publisher: The Museum of Modern Art, New York
Artists: Isa Genzken
Contributors: Michael Darling, Jeffrey Grove, Lisa Lee, Stephanie Weber
Publication Date: 2013
Binding: Hardcover
Dimensions: 9 1/2 x 12 in (24.1 x 30.5 cm)
Pages: 315
Reproductions: 320 color
ISBN: 9780870708862
Retail: $75 US & Canada | £45 | €56
Status: Not Available
Isa Genzken
Isa Genzken’s works express an attraction to that which surrounds and shapes our everyday lives, from design, consumer goods, and the media to architecture and urban environments. Her interest lies in the way in which common aesthetic styles come to illustrate and embody political and social ideologies. 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. 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.