Isa Genzken’s new sculptural works go on view tomorrow at Hauser & Wirth, with a central work showing the bust of Nefertiti and the Mona Lisa, both standing in for the lineage of feminine beauty and the place of women in art history. Genzken appropriates plaster reproductions of Nefertiti’s bust, which she first saw at the Egyptian Museum in Berlin, places sunglasses on them and installs them on white pedestals. Reproductions of the Mona Lisa lean against each pedestal, overlaid with Genzken’s own self-portrait.
Genzken’s sculptures are precariously stacked assemblages of potted plants, designer furniture, empty shipping crates and photographs, among other things, arranged with the traditions of modernist sculpture in mind – traditions which are then manipulated by the artist. Genzken undermines the classical notions of sculpture with this cacophonous array of objects.
Both sculpture and photography combine and overlap in Genzken’s collages, whose dense surfaces are formed from the materials of the artist’s world: magazines, flyers, snapshots of friends, self-portraits and reproduced artworks. Genzken makes use of all surfaces of the gallery, including an on-going series of collages that span the floor of the space, like a pavement down a busy city street.
She re-creates the architectural dimensions of her beloved skyscraper motifs and the riotous colours of the city streets. Devoid of the weightiness and overpowering scale seen in the sculptures of her Minimalist predecessors, these works abandon notions of order and power, allowing the viewer to relate to the works’ inherently human qualities of fragility and vulnerability.
Isa Genzken Hauser & Wirth London, Savile Row 15 November 2012 – 12 January 2013