Since the 1970s, Genzken has developed an approach to sculpture that takes a critical look at the German and American art of the post-war years while at the same time bringing forth a wholly independent and distinctive pictorial language.

Concurrently with her work in the sculpture medium, Genzken has also been working with film for many years. She considers film the most democratic medium of the visual arts. “I always wanted to have the courage to do something completely different, completely crazy and impossible, or even wrong. … For me film is the combination of all the arts, and possibly the most public art, that is, the one most seen. That’s what makes it so appealing to develop truly new ideas for film”, Genzken once remarked.

Within the framework of the exhibition at the MMK 1, three films dating from different phases of the artist’s career are also being featured. The early work Zwei Frauen im Gefecht (“Two Women Engaged in Combat”) of 1974 is being presented as part of the exhibition. Produced during the artists’ student years in Dusseldorf, the film shows Genzken and her fellow student Susan Grayson exchanging their entire apparel several times. Die kleine Bushaltestelle (Gerustbau) (“The Little Bus Stop [Scaffolding]”) of 2012 and Meine Großeltern im Bayrischen Wald (“My Grandparents in the Bavarian Forest”) of 1992 will be screened as part of the programme accompanying the show. All three films are devoted to Genzken’s investigations of role models as well as the question of her own personal and artistic position.

Conceived in close collaboration with the artist, the exhibition is being co-produced with the Museum der Moderne in Salzburg.