Isa Genzken. MetLife

For her first major solo exhibition in Austria, which took place at the Generali Foundation, the art museum of a European insurance company, Isa Genzken (1948 Bad Oldesloe–Berlin, DE) chose the New York headquarters of the Metropolitan Life Insurance Corporation as the subject of the title. The artist, who was living in New York at the time of the exhibition preparations, in the city that she counts as one of her greatest sources of inspiration, triggered a minor controversy at the Generali headquarters. Originally built for the airline Pan American, “MetLife” has been emblazoned on the striking skyscraper since the late 1980s. Based on a design by Walter Gropius, the octagonal skyscraper rises above Grand Central Terminal in Manhattan and dominates Park Avenue. As in Genzken’s earlier projects, her appropriation of the MetLife building and its inscription also reveal her unmistakable view of architecture and design, usually with a dash of humor. I Love New York, Crazy City is also the title of three new books of collages, and this is how she interpreted the inscription in her favorite city as “I met life”. In fact, a vertical cut in the longitudinal axis of the MetLife building is comparable to the floor plan of one of her sculptures, which is also reminiscent of a window or a camera.

Isa Genzken developed her artistic work in the post-war German context in a critical dialogue with European and American art. With her works, which are completely reconceived at regular intervals, she always provides surprises. Over four decades, she has created an unmistakable oeuvre that is characterized by permanent renewal and an highly idiosyncratic artistic approach and language. The exhibition spanned an arc from Genzken’s early stereometric wooden sculptures from the 1970s, which can only be experienced by walking through the space due to their extreme forms and dimensions, to the cast works made of plaster and concrete (1980/1990s) and the most recent works made of epoxy resin. Also on display were films, including Two Women in Combat (1972) and Chicago Drive (1992), as well as photographs and collages, most of them previously not or little-known, like the above-mentioned collage books.