Isa Genzken: Retrospective

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Isa Genzken. _Oil XI_. 2007

Isa Genzken. Oil XI. 2007

Vinyl, plastic, and aluminum suitcases, silkscreen on laminated fabric, jackets, stuffed animals, plastic, paper, frames, and three fabric-and-plastic space suits
Goetz Collection, Munich
© Isa Genzken

Glenn Lowry: Genzken premiered this installation at the 2007 Venice Biennale, an international contemporary art exhibition where she represented Germany. Oil comprises several individual assemblages. The artist employed a variety of materials, including suitcases on wheels, stuffed birds, and posters, among many other elements. Jeffrey Grove.

Curator, Jeffrey Grove: Genzken's sculpture is always intended to be experienced in the round. And increasingly there's a sort of cinematic drama that she's searching for in creating these assemblages that become stage sets. But they're not stage sets that we're meant to view from a distance. We're meant to be not only the audience, but the actors performing the work.

Glenn Lowry: Genzken often uses everyday manufactured materials.

Jeffrey Grove: It's, I believe, a very present day consumer culture mindset, that the world is producing so much material, how do I use it to make a statement about that very condition. So she not only takes what one would call found objects, but they're really purchased products. She doesn't so much find them in the street as go into do-it-yourself stores and buy them..