Isa Genzken: Retrospective

Born in post war Germany in 1948, Isa Genzken studied at the Düsseldorf Academy of Fine Arts before embarking on a career that would ultimately encompass deep explorations of an extraordinary range of mediums, including sculpture, film, drawing, painting, photography, and assemblage.

For some forty years now, Genzken has engaged with both the most salient aesthetic concerns of the time as well as broader questions related to our experience of the exuberant and disorienting flux that defines contemporary culture. The modern urban environment, the nature of space and time, our relationship to the architecture that surrounds us, as well as the ramifications of seminal events such as the collapse of the Berlin Wall and the aftermath of September 11—all are examined with virtuosity, humanity, and incisive wit in Genzken’s diverse production.

Published in tandem with the artist’s first major career survey in the United States, Isa Genzken: Retrospective marks the most comprehensive chronicle to date of the work of one of the most ambitious and influential artists of the past half century. The exhibition started at The Museum of Modern Art in New York (November 2013–March 2014), before it travelled to the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago April–August 2014) and to the Dallas Museum of Art in Dallas (September 2014–January 2015).