Isa Genzken (Volume 17) (October Files (17))

Synopsis

Since The Late 1970s, The Berlin-based Contemporary Artist Isa Genzken (b. 1948) Has Produced A Body Of Work That Is Remarkable For Its Formal And Material Inventiveness. In Her Sculptural Practice, Genzken Has Developed An Expanded Material Repertoire That Includes Plaster, Concrete, Epoxy Resin, And Mass-produced Objects That Range From Action Figures To Discarded Pizza Boxes. Her Heterogeneous Assemblages, A New York Times Critic Observes, Are Brash, Improvisational, Full Of Searing Color And Attitude. Genzken, The Recent Subject Of A Major Retrospective At Moma, Offers A Highly Original Interpretation Of Modernist, Avant-garde, And Postminimalist Practices Even As She Engages Pressing Sociopolitics And Economic Issues Of The Present. These Illustrated Essays Address The Full Span Of Genzken's Work, From The Elegant Floor Sculptures With Which She Began Her Career To The Assemblages, Bursting With Color And Bristling With Bric-a-brac, That She Has Produced Since The Beginning Of The Millennium. The Texts, By Writers Including Yve-alain Bois, Benjamin H. D. Buchloh, And The Artist Herself, Consider Her Formation In The West German Milieu; Her Critique Of Conventions Of Architecture, Reconstruction, And Memorialization; Her Sympathy With Mass Culture; And Her Ongoing Interrogation Of Public And Private Spheres. Two Texts Appear In English For The First Time, Including A Quasi-autobiographical Screenplay Written By Genzken In 1993. Contributors Yve-alain Bois, Benjamin H. D. Buchloh, Diedrich Diederichsen, Hal Foster, Isa Genzken, Isabelle Graw, Lisa Lee, Pamela M. Lee, Birgit Pelzer, Juliane Rebentisch, Josef Strau, Wolfgang Tillmans, Lawrence Weiner. Two Exercises (1974) / Isa Genzken -- Axiomatics Subject To Withdrawal (1979) / Birgit Pelzer -- Isa Genzken: The Fragment As Model (1992) / Benjamin H. D. Buchloh -- Isa Genzken: Fuck The Bauhaus. Architecture, Design, And Photography In Reverse (2014) / Benjamin H. D. Buchloh -- Sketches For A Feature Film (1993) / Isa Genzken -- Free To Be Dependent: Concessions In The Work Of Isa Genzken (1996) / Isabelle Graw -- Subjects At The End Of The Flagpole (2000) / Diedrich Diederichsen -- The Skyscraper At Ear Level (2003) / Pamela M. Lee -- All Things Being Equal (2005) / Benjamin H. D. Buchloh -- Isa Genzken: A Conversation With Wolfgang Tillmans (2003) -- Diedrich Diederichsen In Conversation With Isa Genzken (2006) -- Make Life Beautiful! The Diabolic In The Work Of Isa Genzken (a Tour Through Berlin, Paris, And New York) (2007) / Lisa Lee -- Isa Genzken Again (2010) / Lawrence Weiner -- The Dialectic Of Beauty: On The Work Of Isa Genzken (2007) / Juliane Rebentisch -- The Bum And The Architect (2007) / Yve-alain Bois -- Isa Genzken: Sculpture As Narrative Urbanism (2009) / Josef Strau -- Fantastic Destruction (2014) / Hal Foster. Edited By Lisa Lee ; Essays And Interviews By Isa Genzken [and Twelve Others]. Includes Bibliographical References And Index.