Isa Genzken Wasserspeier and Angels Instructions
- June 1, 2024
- Isa Genzken
Table of Contents
Press Release
Isa Genzken. Wasserspeier and Angels
Hauser & Wirth London
9 May – 27 July 2024
Wasserspeier and Angels
On view is a revival of Isa Genzken’s expansive installation ‘Wasserspeier and
Angels’ (2004), marking 20 years since it was displayed in Genzken’s first
major solo exhibition in London. Originally responding to Hauser & Wirth’s
former historic space in Piccadilly in 2004, the re-presentation of Genzken’s
complex assemblage in the city brings her work into a contemporary context,
confronting socio-political themes that are still relevant today. This moment
follows on from the acclaimed exhibition ‘Isa Genzken: 75/75’ at Neue
Nationalgalerie in Berlin in 2023, celebrating the artist’s 75th birthday with
a display of 75 sculptures from her oeuvre from the 1970s to the present.
Genzken explores the relationships between different media and social,
political and urban spaces, with references to everyday lived experience
intruding on her formal experiments. The first presentation of this work not
only marked Genzken’s inaugural show with the gallery but also captured a
specific moment in time. Working in Berlin and in New York at the turn of the
century, the artist witnessed the aftermath of the fall of the Berlin Wall and
the subsequent changing landscape of the city, as well as the collapse of the
World Trade Center in New York City. In parallel, from the late 1990s on, the
artist’s sculptural works moved towards assembled installations that borrowed
their aesthetic from collages, combining objects with variations in scale. The
work on view exemplifies this new artistic language, characterised by its
engagement with architectural form and its social dimension. Through the
combination of materials sourced for purpose, this multifaceted installation
contains layered references and takes on new meaning in today’s landscape.
About the exhibition
The installation’s starting point came from the artist’s fascination with the
‘Wasserspeier’ (gargoyles) on Cologne Cathedral, encountering their
restoration in the building’s masonry shop. Having tried to convince the
cathedral’s master builder to let her take the carvings to London, the artist
instead created her own gargoyles for the exhibition in 2004, setting them in
dialogue with winged, angelic figures. The duality between the earthbound and
the heavenly has permeated Genzken’s career, reflected in her formal
vocabulary through materials associated with engineering and heaviness, such
as electric cables, aluminum panels and trollies, in addition to objects
evoking the sky, light and wind, from blue sheets to bright lamps and
umbrellas.
Historically, carved gargoyles were provisions for preservation, designed to
direct rainwater away from the building, as well as for protection, banishing
demons by holding up a mirror to evil. Bringing them from the roof to eye
level, Genzken’s gargoyles, instead, confront viewers and humanity at large.
In the same way that some gargoyles depict a hybrid of animals with human
features, the artist imparts an anthropomorphic quality to her figures by
giving them heads and body-like frames. Two figures even wear Genzken’s own
clothing, a jacket and cap, lending the work an autobiographical undertone
whilst also offering a reminder of civilisation.
The four ‘Wasserspeier’ on trolleys appear to skate on the aluminium floor,
which brings to mind the Chrysler Building’s metal cladding. The shiny
material also enables the work to interact with the world around it, both
literally through reflections and metaphorically by speaking to geopolitics;
as such, the work and the surroundings become one. ‘In an effort not to
represent the world but to be part of it— in other words, to be modern—Genzken
chose as her raw materials the cheap, shiny, and ubiquitous building blocks of
the contemporary urban environment […]. Working with these real-world
materials, she created installations that engaged with the everyday in
substance as well as in subject,’ remarks Laura Hoptman, co-curator of ‘Isa
Genzken: Retrospective’ (2013 – 2014) at MoMA, New York.
Totemic columns and pedestals recur throughout Genzken’s work and are seen
here cloaked in blue plastic that alludes to the wings of angels and is
reminiscent of the way in which gowns are draped in Leonardo da Vinci’s
drawings. Other objects, such as the sacrificial lamb or twigs and broken
umbrellas, evoking the power of wind and nature, allow the viewer to relate to
the work’s inherently human qualities of fragility and vulnerability, setting
Genzken apart from her minimalist predecessors who pursued notions of order
and power in their work. The artist’s interplay of objects conjures a place
that is free and ethereal whilst making viewers aware of the restrictions and
limitations of the real world.
About the Artist
Isa Genzken has long been considered one of Germany’s most important and
influential contemporary artists. Born in Bad Oldesloe, Germany, Genzken
studied at the renowned Kunstakademie Düsseldorf, whose faculty at the time
included Joseph Beuys, Bernd and Hilla Becher, Benjamin H.D. Buchloh and
Gerhard Richter. Since the 1970s, Genzken’s diverse practice has encompassed
sculpture, photography, found-object installation, film, drawing and painting.
Her work borrows from the aesthetics of minimalism, punk culture and
assemblage art to confront the conditions of human experience in contemporary
society and the uneasy social climate of capitalism. Genzken is best known for
her sculptures, gaining attention for her minimalist oriented Hyperbolos and
Ellipsoids in the late 70s, and architecturally-inflected works such as her
recent epoxy resin windows and skyscraper Columns from the 90s. Genzken’s
practice is incredibly wide-ranging, but her work remains dedicated to
challenging the viewer’s self-awareness by means of physically altering their
perceptions, bringing bodies together in spaces and integrating elements of a
mixed media into sculpture.
Inspired by the stark severity of modernist architecture and the chaotic
energy of the city, Genzken’s work is continuously looking around itself,
translating into three-dimensional form the way that art, architecture, design
and media affects the experience of urban life, and the divides between public
and private. There is an intuitive and consistent manner to Genzken’s work,
not only in dramatising aspects of space and scale for the audience, but in
creating new dialogues and contact with surfaces of material. The
sociopolitical content is evident and central to her oeuvre.
Press contacts:
Alice Haguenauer, Hauser & Wirth,
alicehaguenauer@hauserwirth.com
, +44 7880 421823
Caption and courtesy:
All images:
Isa Genzken
Wasserspeier and Angels
2004
Mixed media installation on 42 aluminium panels;
18 parts
Dimensions variable
Installation view, Isa Genzken, ‘Wasserspeier and Angels’ (detail), 2004, Art
Basel Unlimited, Switzerland, 2016. © Isa Genzken. All Rights Reserved, DACS
2024. Courtesy the artist and Hauser & Wirth. Photo: Stefan Altenburger
Photography Zürich
Installation view, ‘Isa Genzken. Wasserspeier and Angels’ at Hauser & Wirth
Piccadilly, London, UK, 2004. © Isa Genzken. All Rights Reserved, DACS 2024.
Courtesy the artist and Hauser & Wirth
Installation view, Isa Genzken, ‘Wasserspeier and Angels’ (detail), 2004, Art
Basel Unlimited, Switzerland, 2016. © Isa Genzken. All Rights Reserved, DACS
2024. Courtesy the artist and Hauser & Wirth. Photo: Stefan Altenburger
Photography Zürich
Hauser & Wirth London
23 Savile Row
London W1S 2ET
Gallery hours:
Tuesday to Saturday
10 am – 6 pm
www.hauserwirth.com
Documents / Resources
| Isa
Genzken Wasserspeier and
Angels
[pdf] Instructions
Wasserspeier and Angels, Angels
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