Gender and art

In a new series of paintings unveiled at Hauser & Wirth London, Genzken employs motifs from the language of capitalism to explore themes of self- and social-examination. Since the 1970s, Genzken’s diverse practice has encompassed sculpture, photography, found-object installation, drawing and painting. Her work borrows from the aesthetics of Minimalism, punk culture and assemblage art to confront the conditions of human experience in contemporary society and the uneasy social climate of capitalism.

Isa Genzken - Geldbilder

26 Mar – 16 May 2015

Hauser & Wirth London

EDINBURGH.- Inverleith House presents the first UK exhibition outside London by one of the great living artists of our time, Isa Genzken. The exhibition comprises of fourteen works made in the last ten years and includes several new sculptures completed this year which are being exhibited for the first time in the ground and first-floor rooms.

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A contemporary of Joseph Beuys, Carl Andre and Gerhard Richter, Genzken first came to prominence in 1970s post-war Dusseldorf with distinctive conceptual sculptures she named Hyperbolos and Ellipsoids, lacquered wood forms made possible with nascent computer technologies. As a constant polymath, Genzken’s work has advanced through a range of media and material including concrete sculpture, photography, the photographic readymade, painting, experimental film and, since the mid-1990s, large-scale sculptural assemblages and complex collage.   

Isa Genzken : Botanical Garden

19 July - 28 September 2014

Royal Botanical Garden, Edinburgh

http://www.rbge.org.uk/the-gardens/edinburgh/inverleith-house/current-exhibitions

The Museum of Modern Art’s grand, sometimes grating 40-year survey of the German sculptor Isa Genzken is a disturbance in the force of the New York art world. It counters the season’s trend of big retrospectives devoted to male artists and increases from a paltry four to a still paltry five the number of full-dress sixth-floor retrospectives the Modern has bestowed upon women since taking back its expanded building nine years ago.

“Isa Genzken: Retrospective” also makes the museum feel alive and part of the art world, rather than a tourist destination where everyone lines up for the Magritte show or throngs the modernist parts of the collection even as galleries devoted to overthought, pleasure-averse displays of recent art stand virtually empty. The dour, largely color-free sampling of art since 1980 in the museum’s large second-floor galleries is a perfect example.

"Isa Genzken: Retrospective", through March 10, 2014 at The Museum of Modern Art

http://www.moma.org/

Isa Genzken, MLR, 1992.

Isa Genzken: Retrospective, on view September 14, 2014 through January 4, 2015, spans 40 years of Genzken’s inventive, audacious, and deeply influential career. The exhibition brings together approximately 100 objects in an astonishing variety of techniques, including assemblage, sculpture, painting, photography, collage, drawing, artist’s books, film, and large-scale installations. A majority of the works in the exhibition are on view in the U.S. for the first time, including the large-scale installation Schauspieler (Actors), while others have rarely been publicly exhibited anywhere. 

Isa Genzken: Retrospective

September 14, 2014 to January 4, 2015

The Dallas Museum of Art

http://www.dma.org/art/exhibitions/IsaGenzken

"Michael Darling, chief curator of the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, calls Isa Genzken an artist “hiding in plain sight.”

Even though the 65-year-old artist has shown in top galleries and museums internationally since the 1970s and even represented Germany at the prestigious 2007 Venice Biennale, she remains little known even among art-world cognoscenti. New Yorker art critic Peter Schjeldahl confessed a few months ago in a review to being “only spottily aware” of her work.

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The show, which fills the MCA’s main special-exhibition gallery on the fourth floor, comprises nearly 100 objects, spanning the vast range of mediums in which Genzken has worked, including assemblages, paintings, collages, films, performances and artist books."

Isa Genzken : Retrospective

April 12 - August 3, 2014

Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago

http://www2.mcachicago.org/exhibition/isa-genzken-retrospective/

Disco Soon (Ground Zero), Isa Genzken.

Female artists remain sorely underrepresented in museum exhibitions. Jason Farago explains why the problem persists – and how to fix it.

"When the Museum of Modern Art in New York opens its retrospective of the pioneering German sculptor Isa Genzken later this month, it will be a momentous event for more reasons than one. Genzken, a creator of cryptic, grungy assemblages that employ found objects and commercial materials, is one of the most formidable artists in Europe but has never had an exhibition of this size in the United States. She has been especially influential for younger artists, on both sides of the Atlantic, and this show will introduce her perplexing sculpture to a whole new audience.

But the massive Genzken show (which tours in 2014 to Chicago and Dallas) carries even more weight than usual, because when it opens it will be one of the only full-scale exhibitions by a female artist at any of New York’s most important museums. Thanks to a combination of scheduling accidents and garden-variety sexism, male artists are occupying pretty much every major exhibition space in town,..."