To mark Isa Genzken's 75th birthday, the Neue Nationalgalerie is showing 75 sculptures from all of the artist's creative phases from the 1970s to the present day. The exhibition offers a tour through Genzken's work from the early Hyperbolos of the 1970s, through the concrete works of the 1990s and up to the actors and sculpture groups from the 2000s. The exhibition opens with the giant rose sculpture (2016/23) on the museum's terrace. Arranged chronologically from 1977 to 2023, the works are spread across the entire upper hall. Each individual work can be viewed from all sides and viewers can walk between and around them. Under the influence of American Minimal Art, Isa Genzken (born 1948) created the Ellipsoids and Hyperboloids group of works between 1976 and 1982. 

The ellipsoids are 6-12 meter long wooden sculptures that rest on the ground at one point. The basic shape of the hyperboloids consists of a concave line and they touch the ground at two points. The artist calculated and drew the diameters and dimensions on the computer with a physicist from the University of Cologne. In contrast to Minimal Art, Genzken was interested in the viewer's associations, such as a spear, toothpick or boat. In the mid-1980s, she turned her attention to a new material: plaster. She made small plaster sculptures with wood, metal, paper and glass. The improvised, cave-like forms stand in contrast to the elegance and technical precision of the wooden ellipsoids and hyperboloids and turn to the materiality of the everyday world. In 1985, Genzken created sculptures made of concrete, the world receivers with antennas refer to the function of simultaneous transmission and reception.

Genzken dealt extensively with architecture and urban planning and was particularly fascinated by New York and Berlin. From 1988, she created her first concrete sculptures, which evoked associations with the urban planning of the 1950s and 1960s, such as Le Corbusier's Berlin building Unité d'Habitation. In 1990, she broke through the concrete sculptures and designed the series of works entitled Windows. Here, the dialog between Genzken's art and Mies van der Rohe's glass architecture becomes particularly clear in the interplay between interior and exterior. The sculpture "X" (1992) in turn refers to the façade of the John Hancock building in Chicago (1965-69), the load-bearing parts of which are located in the outer skin for the first time. The sculpture, which was exhibited at Documenta IX, incorporates the idea of steel skeleton crosses. Between 1994 and 2003, Genzken created a series of columns/stelae made of epoxy resin. Her fascination with New York is also evident in these works. The collage-like steles consist of perforated sheet metal on a wooden structure and superimposed layers of glued-on, mirrored, holographic maps and photographic reproductions.

The series Empire/Vampire, Who Kills Death (2003) is considered a paradigm shift in Genzken's work. Like movie scenes, constellations of figures stand on pedestals that become stages for absurd and violent narratives. The title is derived from the Empire State Building, vampires from the Chrysler Building. Toy figures crawl or climb up oversized vases and glasses. The wine glass is a symbol of rituals, celebrations and intoxication. The series Untitled (2006) takes up this narrative approach: Infant dolls sit abandoned under tattered parasols that no longer offer any protection. Human bodies have played an important role in Isa Genzken's work from the very beginning, for example in analogies to architecture or in relation to the viewer's body. Since 2007, she has increasingly used commercial mannequins. The industrially produced mannequins have standardized proportions, a limited repertoire of poses, impassive faces and uniform surfaces. Equipped with oversized helmets and headgear, the actors are not designed to receive, but to defend and protect themselves from the outside world. Many of the clothes and accessories come from Genzken's own wardrobe.

"Untitled" (2018) is one of the most recent works in the exhibition and shows a floor collage of magazines, newspapers, shopping bags and photographs. Genzken collected illustrations from "Der Spiegel" between 1989 and 1991. With the fall of the Berlin Wall, the end of the Cold War and the period before the first Gulf War, the work documents an important period in German history.

Curated by Klaus Biesenbach, Director Neue Nationalgalerie and Lisa Botti, Assistant Curator, Neue Nationalgalerie. A catalog of the exhibition will be published by Verlag Walther König in August 2023. An exploration pass for children and families in the form of a free booklet will accompany the exhibition.

Venue: Kulturforum, Neue Nationalgalerie

Potsdamer Straße 50, 10785 Berlin

Tue - Wed 10 a.m. - 6 p.m., Thu 10 a.m. - 8 p.m., Fri - Sun 10 a.m. - 6 p.m.

www.smb.museum