Isa Genzken
I Love Michael Asher

Past Exhibition 16 Oct – 31 Dec 2016 Los Angeles

About

Beginning 16 October, Hauser Wirth & Schimmel will present ‘Isa Genzken. I Love Michael Asher,’ the first Los Angeles solo exhibition for the celebrated artist.

Isa Genzken was in her late 20s when she visited Michael Asher in California on a travel grant from Dusseldorf Academy, where she had begun teaching in 1977. At this time, Genzken was producing sleek lacquered wood sculptures known as ‘Ellipsoids’ and ‘Hyperbolos.’ This minimalist body of work, which lasted through the early 1980s, engaged with spatial and social aspects of line, mass, scale, color and movement through and around the works.

Since their meeting, Genzken’s diverse practice has encompassed sculpture, photography, 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.

In 1977, Michael Asher delivered small caravan trailer to the first Skulptur Projekte Münster. He had created sculpture out of experience, setting in motion his career-long project of ‘dislocation.’ In the years that followed, Asher’s interventions in galleries and museums included removing walls and doors, or keeping a museum open 24 hours a day. These deceptively simple architectural actions sought to expose the structural ‘givens’ of visual display and disrupt any sense of neutrality promised by galleries. Over a forty-year period, Genzken’s practice and Asher’s aligned in surprisingly fluid ways, despite the visual dissonance of their output. Both mined the formal tenets of sculpture, for example the base, or support structure – whether a plinth or a rolling cart for Genzken, for Asher a wall, window or even an entire city. Both artists present us with alternative (and often discomforting) environments and the critical tools to navigate contradictions around us.

In addition to her interior installation of all new works, this exhibition features in the Courtyard of the gallery, ‘Rose III,’ an 8-meter tall sculpture, modeled after an actual flower Genzken chose and sent to the foundry. The flower simultaneously defies and underscores the fragility and beauty commonly associated with the image of the rose.

Moreover, the towering sculpture brings to the fore ideas about the integration of architecture, nature, and mass culture. Genzken is focused less on the flower’s symbolism than the possibility of conveying a certain shine and shape, even resembling the mass-produced fake flowers found in dollar-stores. An interest in materiality, the bastardized legacy of modernism, and the relationship between the individual and the world is evoked in this exquisite sculpture, delivered with the artist’s unmistakable playful sense of humor.

Selected images

View all
1 of 18

Installation views

View all

Events

Sun 11 Dec 2016, 12:00
Family Studio with Matt Wardell
Los Angeles

Join us for a hands-on Family Studio exploring themes of our current exhibitions, ‘Isa Genzken’ and ‘Schwitters Miró Arp.’ About the Studio: Working in collage and assemblage, families will come together to construct a collaborative sculpture based on the ‘total work’ of Kurt Schwitter’s Hanover studio…
Learn more Register now

Sat 12 Nov 2016, 12:00
Family Studio: Merz-Column Meets Merzbau
Los Angeles

Join us for a hands-on Family Studio exploring themes of our current exhibitions, ‘Isa Genzken’ and ‘Schwitters Miró Arp.’ About the Studio: Working in collage and assemblage, families will come together to construct a collaborative sculpture based on the ‘total work’ of Kurt Schwitter’s Hanover studio…
Learn more Register now

About the artist

Isa Genzken has long been considered one of Germany’s most important and influential contemporary artists. Born in Bad Oldesloe, Germany, Genzken studied at the renowned Kunstakademie Düsseldorf whose faculty at the time included Joseph Beuys, Bernd and Hilla Becher, Benjamin H.D. Buchloh…

Learn more

Current Exhibitions

Current Exhibitions


Be the first to know updates about Hauser & Wirth
Thanks for signing up. You must confirm your email address before we can send you. Please check your email and follow the instructions.
*By submitting your email address, you consent to receive our Newsletter. Your consent is revocable at any time by clicking the unsubscribe link in our Newsletter. The Newsletter is sent in accordance with our Privacy Policy and to advertise products and services of Hauser & Wirth Ltd. and its affiliated companies.
×
×
×
×