Director, Glenn Lowry: Isa Genzken was in New York City on September 11, 2001. This series, called Empire/Vampire Who Kills Death, is related to her experience of the tragic events that she witnessed that day. Curator Laura Hoptman.
Curator, Laura Hoptman: These works are chilling. And although there are clever juxtapositions of objects that we encounter every day – like a rubber duck or a child's shoe. They eloquently express the terror and the misery of those of us who experienced that moment at that time. In a video that accompanies the sculptures, Genzken takes a video-camera and places it just at eye level and wanders through these tableaus as if we are in some sort of war documentary without narration.
It can be argued that Genzken's works from the very beginning have narrative content. But it is in the Empire/Vampire series of works that that narrative comes to the fore. Walking through a group ofEmpire/Vampire sculptures is a definitively cinematic experience, with each sculpture a scene in a terrible unfolding film of war and disaster.