Isa Genzken: Retrospective

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Isa Genzken's Ellipsoids and Hyperbolos, 1976–82

Isa Genzken. Isa Genzken's Ellipsoids and Hyperbolos, 1976–82. 1982

Isa Genzken. Rot-gelb-schwarzes Doppelellipsoid ‘Zwilling’ (Red-Yellow-Black Double Ellipsoid “Twin”), 1982.
Lacquered wood, two parts.
Courtesy the artist and Galerie Buchholz, Cologne/Berlin.
© Isa Genzken

Director, Glenn Lowry: The sculptures on this platform are among the earliest Isa Genzken exhibited. Sabine Breitwieser, Director of the Museum of Modern Art, Salzburg.

Curator, Sabine Breitwieser: The artist, by creating these extremely long, slim and curved-shaped sculptures, forces you to walk around, which makes you end in a kind of dialogue with the sculptures, with the space, but one also enters in a dialogue with time; the time you need to explore these works.

Glenn Lowry: Genzken worked with a physicist and a carpenter to produce these highly finished, precise shapes from drawings plotted on a computer.

Sabine Breitwieser: There are two type of forms. One is ellipsoid. So this is a form which touches the ground only in the middle, and the rest is like floating. And the other type, hyperbolos, which are constructed in the opposite way, so they have a slim middle piece which is floating in the air and they touch the ground or have contact with the ground on the outer edges.