Curator, Michael Darling: Isa Genzken is primarily known as a sculptor, but there are some very distinct bodies of painting that she's made over the course of her career. One of the very first series is called Basic Research.
Director, Glenn Lowry: Michael Darling.
Michael Darling: And they were all made in a very similar process. She would lay canvas down on her studio floor, not bothering to sweep up the floor, so whatever junk was laying around on the floor was part of the composition as she then rubbed oil paint onto the canvas, picking up all of the texture of the floor underneath her. These paintings really have an evidence of the hand. You can see the swipes of the squeegee across the canvas that really reveals how these pictures were made. And the title alone, Basic Research, I think, kind of gives you a sense of materiality that she's trying to capture here; that these are recordings, in a way, of the world around her, and her studio in particular.