Make Yourself Pretty!
April 9–June 26, 2016
Isa Genzken (1948) is one of the most remarkable and radical artists of our time. The exhibition presents the broad spectrum of Genzken’s work, from her early films, drawings, ellipsoids and concrete sculptures to complex narrative collages and everyday items integrated into montages. The presentation highlights topics such as modernity, the human body, portraits, city culture and architecture. Genzken has earned international renown with her profound work. Her diverse works represent one of the most important contemporary stances of our time. Her oeuvre is now comprehensively on show in Berlin for the first time.
As an artist, Isa Genzken is prepared to risk it all in her quest for artistic regeneration. In her radical manner she develops diverse works, which are concerned with the topic of beauty in the sense of the essential and absolute.
Based on the category of sculpture, her work distinguishes itself through the constant and further development of imagery and unlimited use of media and materials. In the 1970s, she produced sculptures designed on the computer, and thereby referred back to American minimalism and conceptual art. Starting from the long, elegantly slender wooden sculptures, so-called “ellipsoids” and “hyperbolos,” one radical step followed another: sculptures made from bare plaster or concrete, collaged books, complex narrative assemblages of industrially produced materials and everyday items, various film formats, photography, paintings, architectural models and outdoor sculptures.
Her art is playful and sometimes brightly-coloured but anything other than superficial. With her feel for materials and their arrangements she creates pieces that make you think. Her power of innovation and her ideas are rich in autobiographical elements and subtle comments on society, and they serve as a point of reference and source of inspiration for generations of artists.
