New York
Isa Genzken’s recent retrospective, featuring a complex mixture of things with resonating presence, provided a 180-degree exodus from participatory art and its aim of eliminating the artist. While Genzken’s work is neither imposing nor necessarily spectacular, it is very contemporary. As the show unfolded, viewers witnessed Genzken’s ongoing creation of a new language of found objects. The 150 works on view spanned 40 years, and though sculpture dominated, paintings, photographs, collages, drawings, artist’s books, and films, were also included. Genzken’s bricolage accretions are inspired by a lifetime of experiences. For this child of postwar Germany, alienation, destruction, and reconstruction are natural, and commonplace, themes. Like the work of Franz West, Genzken’s brimming assemblages and installations straddle the line between the solemn and the absurd.…see the entire review in the print version of November’s Sculpture magazine.
