AN ARTIST GETS HER DUE
MCA retrospective reveals the varied perspectives of Isa Genzken
Michael Darling, chief curator of the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, calls Isa Genzken an artist “hiding in plain sight.”
Even though the 65-yearold artist has shown in top galleries and museums internationally since the 1970s and even represented Germany at the prestigious 2007 Venice Biennale, she remains little known even among art-world cognoscenti. New Yorker art critic Peter Schjeldahl confessed a few months ago in a review to being “only spottily aware” of her work.
But such under-appreciation is changing quickly, because of a large-scale retrospective that was shown last year at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City and opens Saturday at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago.
Darling has wanted to do a major show of Genzken’s work, and when he assumed his MCA post in July 2010, it was the first idea that he presented to the museum’s director, Madeleine Grynsztejn.
“She recognized right away that the time was ripe to do this,” he said, “primarily because [Genzken’s] work has just been so influential and it’s so varied. It’s exactly the kind of work where you need to do a big show, bring it under one roof and take a good hard look at it.”
After he got the green light, it turned out that other curators had similar thoughts, so he teamed with his counterparts at MOMA and the Dallas Museum of Art, and the three institutions pooled resources to make the exhibition a reality.
The show, which fills the MCA’s main special-exhibition gallery on the fourth floor, comprises nearly 100 objects, spanning the vast range of mediums in which Genzken has worked, including assemblages, paintings, collages, films, performances and artist books.
It ranges from the Berlinbased artist’s early postminimalist floor sculptures to appropriated images of advertisements; large-scale photos of ears to rough, concrete architectural maquettes; suitcase assemblag- es to extravagantly dressed mannequins.
Indeed, Darling believes that Genzken’s constant experimentation and her resistance to easy categorization is one of the primary reasons she has escaped broader notice before now.
“One of the hallmarks of her work is not sticking to a signature style,” he said. “She’s always changing. It’s completely inconsistent, but in the best sense of the word. So it’s hard to point to one thing and say, ‘That’s an Isa Genzken’ like you can say about Andy Warhol or even Gerhard Richter.”
The curator thinks her gender has also hurt her. New York Times art critic Roberta Smith noted last year that this show was just one of five “full-dress sixth-floor retrospectives” that MOMA has devoted to a female artist since its expanded building opened in 2004.
“There is no question that there is a certain amount of sexism still in the art world that might have allowed her to be dismissed and not taken seriously over all these years,” Darling said.
But he is convinced this show will offset, at least partially, any such past wrongs and validate her central, influential role in contemporary art for the past four decades.