Isa Genzken
13 Nov 2010 - 31 Jul 2012
ISA GENZKEN
Rose II
13 November, 2011 - 31 July, 2012
Standing twenty-eight feet tall, acclaimed German artist Isa Genzken’s Rose II (2007) is the second sculpture to be presented as part of the New Museum’s ongoing Façade Sculpture Program since the building’s completion in December 2007. This is Isa Genzken’s first public artwork in the United States. A crucial figure in Post-war contemporary art, Genzken is a sculptor whose work re-imagines architecture, assemblage, and installation, giving form to new plastic environments and precarious structures. The artist represented Germany at the 2007 Venice Biennale and has shown her work in leading museums across Europe. She was among a group of prominent international artists featured in the exhibition “Unmonumental,” the survey that inaugurated the New Museum’s SANAA building.
Rose II was originally created in 1993 and reprised in 2007. It is the culmination of a practice that explores the way we perceive objects and images through our senses; the implications of scale; and the integration of architecture, nature, and mass culture. Although Genzken is a longtime resident of Berlin, she has had a forty-year love affair with New York City, which began when she first visited as a student. Looking back on that experience, she has commented, “To me, New York had a direct link with sculpture... (It) is a city of incredible stability and solidity.” The installation of Rose II can be seen as a tribute to a place Genzken continues to love.
Isa Genzken
Born 1948, Bad Oldesloe, Germany/Lives and works in Berlin, Germany
Isa Genzken’s sculptural practice overlaps with film, photography, video, collage, books and works on paper to reflect the anarchy and chaos of the urban landscape. Almost always architecturally inflected, many of Genzken’s sculptures are recognizable as small-scale skyscraper figures that range in density from intense combinations of graphic and painterly detritus to brutalist, concrete buildings with little detail or color. Genzken’s play with scale and montage, in which objects, images and poured paint collide, generates ruptures in visual perception, giving pause to the ways in which the external world is perceived.
Isa Genzken studied fine arts and art history in Hamburg, Berlin, and Cologne before completing her studies at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf in 1977. Genzken was the subject of a major retrospective in 2009, jointly organized by the Museum Ludwig, Cologne and the Whitechapel Art Gallery, London. She represented Germany at the Venice Biennale in 2007, and other notable solo exhibitions in the past decade include Malmö Konsthall, Sweden (2008); the Camden Arts Center, London (2006); the Photographers Gallery, London (2005); the Kunsthalle Zürich (2003); and the Städtlische Galerie im Lenbachhaus Kunstbau, Munich (2003). Her work is included in the collections of many prominent institutions internationally, including the Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh; the Generali Foundation, Vienna; the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, D.C.; the Museum Ludwig, Cologne; and the Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven.
Rose II
13 November, 2011 - 31 July, 2012
Standing twenty-eight feet tall, acclaimed German artist Isa Genzken’s Rose II (2007) is the second sculpture to be presented as part of the New Museum’s ongoing Façade Sculpture Program since the building’s completion in December 2007. This is Isa Genzken’s first public artwork in the United States. A crucial figure in Post-war contemporary art, Genzken is a sculptor whose work re-imagines architecture, assemblage, and installation, giving form to new plastic environments and precarious structures. The artist represented Germany at the 2007 Venice Biennale and has shown her work in leading museums across Europe. She was among a group of prominent international artists featured in the exhibition “Unmonumental,” the survey that inaugurated the New Museum’s SANAA building.
Rose II was originally created in 1993 and reprised in 2007. It is the culmination of a practice that explores the way we perceive objects and images through our senses; the implications of scale; and the integration of architecture, nature, and mass culture. Although Genzken is a longtime resident of Berlin, she has had a forty-year love affair with New York City, which began when she first visited as a student. Looking back on that experience, she has commented, “To me, New York had a direct link with sculpture... (It) is a city of incredible stability and solidity.” The installation of Rose II can be seen as a tribute to a place Genzken continues to love.
Isa Genzken
Born 1948, Bad Oldesloe, Germany/Lives and works in Berlin, Germany
Isa Genzken’s sculptural practice overlaps with film, photography, video, collage, books and works on paper to reflect the anarchy and chaos of the urban landscape. Almost always architecturally inflected, many of Genzken’s sculptures are recognizable as small-scale skyscraper figures that range in density from intense combinations of graphic and painterly detritus to brutalist, concrete buildings with little detail or color. Genzken’s play with scale and montage, in which objects, images and poured paint collide, generates ruptures in visual perception, giving pause to the ways in which the external world is perceived.
Isa Genzken studied fine arts and art history in Hamburg, Berlin, and Cologne before completing her studies at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf in 1977. Genzken was the subject of a major retrospective in 2009, jointly organized by the Museum Ludwig, Cologne and the Whitechapel Art Gallery, London. She represented Germany at the Venice Biennale in 2007, and other notable solo exhibitions in the past decade include Malmö Konsthall, Sweden (2008); the Camden Arts Center, London (2006); the Photographers Gallery, London (2005); the Kunsthalle Zürich (2003); and the Städtlische Galerie im Lenbachhaus Kunstbau, Munich (2003). Her work is included in the collections of many prominent institutions internationally, including the Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh; the Generali Foundation, Vienna; the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, D.C.; the Museum Ludwig, Cologne; and the Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven.