Isa Genzken: Doing

“Because I'm a person who always has to do something. If I cannot do anything, I'm in a very bad way. But really I'm always working on something. And I always want to work, too. Well, the few artists I know really well, they are all so... It's a really bad block when you think, right, now I've got to do art. It really is very important to learn that that is not the most important thing.”

Isa Genzken

2001 - 2010, Isa Genzken in conversation with Wolfgang Tillmans' (2003)

Art , Way , Thinking , Learning

“I always wanted to have the courage to do totally crazy, impossible, and also wrong things.”

Isa Genzken

Quote of Isa Genzken, 1994; as cited on the website of Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam http://www.stedelijk.nl/en/exhibitions/isa-genzken#sthash.9tR3JC9l.dpuf: exhibition Isa Genzken: Mach dich Hübsch! 11-2015 - 03-2016.
1990 - 2000

Courage

“Something that bothers me with some of my students is that their works are so cold towards the viewer. I have always told the students that they have to imagine how the viewer sees something, too. You've got to put yourself in the viewer's shoes when you do something. That's important to me. It may be complicated, but it's important to me. Otherwise I find it too cold or too arrogant.”

Isa Genzken

2001 - 2010, Isa Genzken in conversation with Wolfgang Tillmans' (2003)

Shoe , Imagination

“Well, at first I wanted to put blinds on the building [of the outdoor-sculpture Josef Strau did for her recently]. But when I do something I've already done before, I sometimes have a certain feeling of uncertainty. Although I am falling back on something that I know is safe and pretty good. But then it was all too expensive. I had seen glowing green, fresh bamboo at the KaDeWe store. It had attracted my attention and I thought it would be nice to do something with it. Back home, sitting over the photo, drawing some things on it, I remembered this lovely green bamboo again and also that there was this fascist building – or partly fascist building – next to the store, a theater, an ugly building. And then I thought, bamboo is politically correct, that's just the thing. But I also think it's visually beautiful. Simple. The work is called 'Haare wachsen wie sie wollen”

Isa Genzken

'Hair grows the way it wants'
2001 - 2010, Isa Genzken in conversation with Wolfgang Tillmans' (2003)

Love , Beauty , Way , Feeling

“The show is called 'Wind'. I tried here to make work which looks like wind, and it is the most difficult thing to do; I was thinking of Leonardo da Vinci – as he was, for instance, always wanting to fly. And then, this hand of Michael Jackson is like 'ffffffff', 'I'm leaving' (makes gesture with her hand and mouth in the mirror in the hallway of the gallery, mimicking the action that Jackson is depicted making on the invitation card of her show - Simon Denny). Not in a sad way, but…. in a way a little bit sad too. And then I said 'Isa Genzken', because I always liked him so much. For instance, I would always have jackets like this one. This is my favourite kind of style, and so I said 'ffff' [blowing gesture] 'Now I'm coming'… It's like 'don't be afraid, don't be sad, you know… I'm here.”

Isa Genzken

2001 - 2010, Out to Lunch with Isa Genzken' (2009)

Sadness , Way , Thinking , Flying

“I was twenty-one when I first went to New York, and I was so fascinated by the architecture and glad that something like that existed and that I was able to have this visual experience that I thought to myself, this is where I want to live. To me, New York had a direct link with sculpture – that must have been it. Although at twenty-one I wasn't a sculptress yet, I was just starting my studies and I didn't even know what I wanted to do... New York is a city of incredible stability and solidity. And then the height of the buildings – that impressed me, like the people who always seemed a bit happier than the Germans in the street. When I came back to Germany it seemed to me that it wasn't particularly nice, my visual surroundings – it was all so dreary. And modernism hardly features at all in Germany. Okay, there was Bauhaus and there was this and that, but modernism is practically non-existent in architecture.”

Isa Genzken

2001 - 2010, Isa Genzken in conversation with Wolfgang Tillmans' (2003)

People , Study

“There was a lot of revision that went into [making] the [Wind] sculptures, [c. 2009 - meant as her response to the death of Michael Jackson which she admired]. It might look like I just went in the gallery and they just went up – just like that – but it was not like that. It was really a long process to get the things to look the way they do, to have that balance especially in relation to what I already said about minimalism, and to also have this light touch to them.”

Isa Genzken

2001 - 2010, Out to Lunch with Isa Genzken' (2009)

Death , Way , Light

“.. you see they hung my painting here [on her show 'Wind', 2009] I did that in the early 1990s. People never really liked them so much back then, they thought they looked more like photographs. Actually, I was doing them when I was still married to Gerhard Richter [till 1993], and it was somehow in relation to what he was doing, you know, these kind of side-to-side gestural abstracts – done like this [gestures as if pulling a squeegee over a surface from one side to the other] like paintings of the 1950s. Mine were called 'Basic Research', they were rubbings of oil paint on canvas – frottages of the floor of my studio. I did quite a few of these. [Gerhard] Richter put one up in his studio for some time... But he found it too hard and then took it out after a while.”

Isa Genzken

2001 - 2010, Out to Lunch with Isa Genzken' (2009)

People , Time , Painting

“Each one of those ['Ellipsoids'] took at least three months [each]. I was starting those, when I was still at the Düsseldorf Academy. There was a very nice man in the workshop there who was very helpful in the process of making them. And they were extremely complicated – to get the shape right and everything. I mean one could get them sent to a factory, and have them produced according to these computer drawings, but somehow I didn’t really want to do this at the time – and also I did not have the money to do that anyway. Once I tried to have one fabricated in this way, but when it came back there was nothing there somehow. It was not like the ones that were made in the workshop”

Isa Genzken

2001 - 2010, Out to Lunch with Isa Genzken' (2009)

Money , Way , Time , Help

“I think that photography has a lot to do with sculpture – because it is three-dimensional and because it depicts reality. For example, I have always been able to relate to photography more than to painting. When I was photographing the hi-fi adverts ['Hi-Fi-Serie' (1979)] I thought to myself, everyone has one of these towers at home. It's the latest thing, the most modern equipment available. So a sculpture must be at least as modern and must stand up to it. Then I hung the pictures on the wall and put an ellipsoid on the floor and thought, the ellipsoid must be at least as good as this advert. At least as good. That's how good a modern sculpture has to be. Do you see what I mean? That was the dialogue…”

Isa Genzken

2001 - 2010, Isa Genzken in conversation with Wolfgang Tillmans' (2003)

Home , Thinking , Reality , Painting

“I had just had an operation, I was totally bored and so I just took my camera and took some pictures of myself. Out of boredom. I only realised afterwards that this work was something special. Taking photos in the clinic and publishing them in a catalogue.... it suddenly took on a kind of seriousness. Everyone's scared of clinics, and no-one wants to see what a clinic looks like from the inside. Well not really. And everyone's a bit scared of having to go there themselves. And there I was in there. And I stand by it. And I used the clinic as a studio and started taking photos. And then I felt better. Just because it let me do something.”

Isa Genzken

2001 - 2010, Isa Genzken in conversation with Wolfgang Tillmans' (2003)

Photo

“You know that I don't give interviews much? There were just a few – with Lawrence Weiner, with Danny MacDonald that I published with in the 'I Love New York, Crazy City book' – do you know this one? And also the 2005 interview with Wolfgang Tillmans for 'Artforum' – that was one I particularly enjoyed. I was always a bit scared to do an interview, especially with Lawrence Weiner, I mean, he is just so articulate – he can really speak about the work so well! And did you see this interview I did with Kai Althoff – 'Why I don’t do interviews?”

Isa Genzken

2001 - 2010, Out to Lunch with Isa Genzken' (2009)

Love , Books

“Yes. Basically, I can read your photography [of Wolfgang Tillmans, who is interviewing her] and see what moves you. What really moves you and not just faked emotion. I don't think it's good when it's like that in art – but unfortunately it often is. That's why I like Bruce Nauman, for example, as a sculptor. With his work, sometimes I have really thought to myself, that's simply beautiful... Above all, it is difficult enough to depict something that moves you deep down inside. But that's ultimately what art is all about, and that's also what appeals to people – if an artist can do it.”

Isa Genzken

2001 - 2010, Isa Genzken in conversation with Wolfgang Tillmans' (2003)

People , Beauty , Art , Thinking