Now in its fourth year, the Nasher Prize is the most ambitious international award in sculpture, established to honor a living artist who elevates the understanding of sculpture and its possibilities. With a career spanning four decades, 2019 laureate Isa Genzken has continually reinvented the language of sculpture by creating objects inspired by popular culture and historical events that explore the complexities of contemporary realism.
Three small, scruffy plaster sculptures from 1984 sit in one of the 18 rooms in ‘Mach Dich hübsch!’ (loosely translated as ‘Make Yourself Pretty!’), an immersive exhibition that brings together forty years of Isa Genzken’s work.
On the occasion of the exhibition ‘Isa Genzken. Retrospective’ at MoMA, artists, curators and gallerists discuss the work of arguably one of the most important and influential female artists of the past 40 years.
In a 2006 Frieze magazine article German artist Isa Genzken was posed the question: ‘What is your favourite building?’ Her response? ‘Empire State Building’: a fitting answer for an artist whose oeuvre displays her interest and fascination with construction, architecture, large-scale sculpture and the New York skyscraper.
