Isa Genzken at H&W

A new exhibition at Hauser & Wirth Savile Row displays a series of new and recent work by the Berlin-based artist, whose totemic columns, pedestal works and collages present inherently human qualities of fragility and vulnerability.

A new exhibition at Hauser & Wirth Savile Row displays a series of new and recent work by Berlin-based artist Isa Genzken, whose work translates into three-dimensional form the way that art, architecture, design and media affects the experience of urban life. Genzken is inspired by the stark severity of modernist architecture and the chaotic energy of the city, as well as by art history, the aesthetics of the great American artists of the Sixties and pop culture.

Genzken's totemic columns, pedestal works and collages combine disparate aspects from many sources in nonsensical, harmonious sculptures: 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. Devoid of the weightiness and overpowering scale seen in the sculptures of Genzken's 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. "I have always said that with any sculpture you have to be able to say, although this is not a ready-made, it could be one," has said Genzken. "That's what a sculpture has to look like. It must have a certain relation to reality".
Top: Isa Genzken, installation view, <em>Isa Genzken. Hallelujah</em>, Hauser & Wirth Zürich, Switzerland, 2012.
© Isa Genzken, Courtesy the artist and Hauser & Wirth. Photo by Stefan Altenburger Photography Zürich. Above: Left, Isa Genzken,
<em>Untitled</em>, 2012. © Isa Genzken.
Courtesy the artist and Hauser & Wirth. Photo by Stefan Altenburger Photography Zürich. Right, Isa Genzken,
<em>Untitled</em>, 2012. © Isa Genzken.
Courtesy the artist and Hauser & Wirth. Photo by Stefan Altenburger Photography Zürich
Top: Isa Genzken, installation view, Isa Genzken. Hallelujah, Hauser & Wirth Zürich, Switzerland, 2012. © Isa Genzken, Courtesy the artist and Hauser & Wirth. Photo by Stefan Altenburger Photography Zürich. Above: Left, Isa Genzken, Untitled, 2012. © Isa Genzken. Courtesy the artist and Hauser & Wirth. Photo by Stefan Altenburger Photography Zürich. Right, Isa Genzken, Untitled, 2012. © Isa Genzken. Courtesy the artist and Hauser & Wirth. Photo by Stefan Altenburger Photography Zürich
Both sculpture and photography combine and overlap in the artist's collages, whose dense surfaces are formed from magazines, flyers, snapshots of friends, self-portraits and reproduced artworks. At Hauser & Wirth, Genzken makes use of all surfaces of the gallery, including an on-going series of collages that span the floor of the space.

Through 12 January 2013
Isa Genzken
Hauser & Wirth Savile Row
23 Savile Row, London
Isa Genzken, installation in artist's studio of <em>Untitled</em>, 2012. © Isa Genzken. Courtesy the artist, Hauser & Wirth and Galerie Buchholz, Cologne
Isa Genzken, installation in artist's studio of Untitled, 2012. © Isa Genzken. Courtesy the artist, Hauser & Wirth and Galerie Buchholz, Cologne
Left, Isa Genzken, <em>Untitled</em>, 2012. © Isa Genzken.
Courtesy the artist, Hauser & Wirth and Galerie Buchholz, Cologne. Photo by Alex Delfanne. Right, Isa Genzken, <em>Untitled (detail)</em>, 2012.
© Isa Genzken.
Courtesy the artist, Hauser & Wirth and Galerie Buchholz, Cologne. Photo by Alex Delfanne
Left, Isa Genzken, Untitled, 2012. © Isa Genzken. Courtesy the artist, Hauser & Wirth and Galerie Buchholz, Cologne. Photo by Alex Delfanne. Right, Isa Genzken, Untitled (detail), 2012. © Isa Genzken. Courtesy the artist, Hauser & Wirth and Galerie Buchholz, Cologne. Photo by Alex Delfanne

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