Isa Genzken Solo Exhibition at Secession

Wednesday, 07 June 2006 10:29

Vienna, Austria - For more than thirty years, Isa Genzken has been developing a versatile oeuvre, continually extending it by adding new aspects.  Her settings, her unusual combinations of materials, and the fragile but monumental character of her constructions reflect the surrounding world and the fragility of human existence.

Her work—which includes sculptures and installations as well as photography, collage, and film—explores the space between public claims and private artistic autonomy, thus defining an interface where the personal and the universal meet.  The formal and conceptual rigor at the root of Isa Genzken’s approach is tempered by unrestricted freedom, producing works that can be interpreted and experienced on very different levels.

A central role is played by the choice and combination of materials with different connotations which the artist finds at home depots, builders’ suppliers, and department stores: whereas in the past Genzken used wood, plaster, epoxy resins, and above all concrete, the material of Modernism, her main materials today are plastic, synthetics, and a wide range of mirrors, as well as everyday items and consumer goods such as chairs—design classics alongside cheap camping chairs—garments, and plastic dolls and animals.

For her exhibition in the Hauptraum at the Secession, Isa Genzken has devised an installation with new sculptures and pieces on the wall: wheelchairs and seats draped in various textiles, ribbons, and sheets, walking frames, anthropomorphic figures, and wall-filling collages made from mirrors, photos, and adhesive tape create a carefully arranged image.  Warholesque baby dolls with their outsize glasses look like prematurely aged children or, conversely, like infantilized adults, waiting under tattered parasols on a Hollywood set for shooting to recommence.  Exhibition dates July 6 – September 10, 2006.

ISA GENZKEN, born in 1948 in Bad Odeslohe, lives and works in Berlin. Solo Shows : 2006 Sport, Camden Arts Centre, London; Galerie im Taxispalais, Innsbruck; 2005 Isa Genzken: New Work, David Zwirner, New York; Kinder filmen, Galerie Daniel Buchholz, Cologne; 2004 Wasserspeier and Angels, Hauser & Wirth, London among many others.

Visit Hauptraum at the Secession at : http://www.secession.at