Director, Glenn Lowry: This is the first instance in which Genzken creates an ensemble of assemblages. Curator Laura Hoptman.
Curator, Laura Hoptman: _Fuck the Bauhaus, New Buildings for New York_was the first possibility that Genzken had to make a commission in New York City that would be shown in New York City. Genzken lived in downtown New York near Wall Street and gathered materials from the streets, everything from the orange caution netting that surrounds construction sites to bits of plastic that one can buy at Home Depot.
You know, a building is a building; but it also sits on a street. And this is something that Isa Genzken completely understands. So Fuck the Bauhaus as a group of objects, as an installation brings the viewer into the streets of New York via the objects that the artist found there.
Glenn Lowry: Although they may seem makeshift, these structures still convey Genzken's interest in, and understanding of, architectural form.
Laura Hoptman: Therein lies the partial explanation for the crazy title which sends up the great contribution specifically of German architecture to modernism and American modern architecture and also, in a way, gives a back-handed homage to it.
These works reward close looking. In Fuck the Bauhaus No. 2, at the very top is a tiny silver chain, the kind of thing that you would see hanging from a single light bulb in an unrenovated loft. And this tiny chain serves as a kind of light-hearted extra on a sculpture that really is a commentary on ornament.
On the side is a photograph of a flower. Genzken has said in the past that one of the things that the Bauhaus ignored was the flower, the notion of the ornament.