The Only Female Fool. Isa Genzken at Kunsthalle Wien

I’m Isa Genzken, The Only Female Fool in the self-chosen title of Isa Genzken’s exhibition curated by Nicolaus Schafhausen at Kunsthalle Wien. This statement, as we can read in the booklet of the exhibition, characterises the smooth transition between the deep earnestness and the eccentric, overwhelming exuberance, inherent in her work. Isa Genzken is one of the most important and influential artists of our time. An exhibition of her work, also curated by Nicolaus Schafhausen, was showcased in the German Pavilion at the Venice Biennale in 2007.

Isa Genzken, Installation view: I’m Isa Genzken, The Only Female Fool, Kunsthalle Wien, Vienna. Photo: Stephan Wyckoff

The large-scale exhibition at Kunsthalle Wien focuses on Genzken’s fascination with the urban. Urban architecture—its beauty and desolation—is a central theme of Genzken’s work, which mirrors the city’s heterogeneity and embodies its extremes of rawness and refinement. Her sculptural exploration of architecture is connected by reflections on the social and the lived space in the global metropolises. Her work displays a critical look at the present, and takes this as the starting point for a radical reinvention of reality.

Isa Genzken, Installation view: I’m Isa Genzken, The Only Female Fool, Kunsthalle Wien 2014, Photo: Stephan Wyckoff: Isa Genzken, Strandhäuser zum Umziehen (Detail), 2000, Courtesy Sammlung FRAC Nord-Pas de Calais, Dunkerque and Galerie Buchholz, Berlin/Cologne

Walking through the exhibition you are surrounded by Genzken’s multifaceted work, that involves many different ideas, juxtaposing formal rigor with a playful combination of colors and materials. This diversity of expression coincides to the dynamics of the city and makes you part of its complexity, in which you get completely involved.
Genzken’s Social Facades (2002) are pictorial objects covered with foil and other reflective materials. It seems like one can see oneself in them, but all they do is providing a distorted image. They are reminiscent of surfaces of corporate buildings, with their reflective exterior that allows the inside to look out, but prevents the outside from glancing in – attractive and repulsive at the same time.

Isa Genzken, Soziale Fassade, 2002, I’m Isa Genzken, The Only Female Fool” Kunsthalle Wien, Vienna

The Beach Huts, ten objects from the year 2000, are improvised houses that Genzken assembled out of different materials. The reconstructed space, partially open, generates a latent voyeurism in which the boundaries between public and private spheres seem to blur.

Isa Genzken, Strandhäuser zum Umziehen, 2000 (Detail), I’m Isa Genzken, The Only Female Fool, Kunsthalle Wien, Vienna. Courtesy Sammlung FRAC Nord-Pas de Calais, Dunkerque und Galerie Buchholz, Berlin/Köln

A further focus of the exhibition is Genzken’s artist friends, whose positions she particularly appreciates. She shares this exploration of contradictions of urban life and its inherent potential for social change with artists such as Gordon Matta-Clark and Dan Graham. In the exhibition, selected works by these artists are showcased in dialogue with works by Genzken – which is intended to bring into focus the parallels in their explorations of the urban space. In addition, artwork by Gerhard Richter, Carl Andre, Jasper Johns, Wolfgang Tillmans and Lawrence Weiner, also exhibited in the show, are for Genzken a further source of artistic dialogue.

Isa Genzken, “I’m Isa Genzken, The Only Female Fool”, Kunsthalle Wien, Vienna, through 7 September 2014.