The director of Berlin’s Neue Nationalgalerie on the seminal German sculptor and the retrospective ‘75/75’, celebrating her life’s work and ongoing influence

As told to Isabel Parkes

‘A catalyst and an inspiration’: Klaus Biesenbach on artist Isa Genzken

On the eve of the opening of sculptor <a href="https://www.artbasel.com/catalog/artist/6929/Isa-Genzken">Isa Genzken</a>'s retrospective, the director of Berlin's Neue Nationalgalerie and former MoMA PS1 director, Klaus Biesenbach, reflects on her lasting influence.
‘When you organize a retrospective of an artist, it’s as if you’re putting together a portrait, or at least a portrait of the artist’s production. This exhibition brings together 75 works to celebrate Isa Genzken’s 75th birthday this year. It clearly follows her chronology, and my fellow curator Lisa Botti and I tried to get at least one example from every body of work, every big chapter, in her oeuvre.

‘We are showing some of the concrete pieces – the so-called Weltempfänger (World Receiver, 2015) – as well as the display doll-sized works (Empire, Vampire, 2005), the monumental pieces (Rose, 1993), and the smaller early works, such as a self-portrait as a brain (Mein Gehirn, My Brain, 1984). The show aims to represent the breadth of Isa’s production, and so we adhere to what came first and what followed and, through that, a narrative unfolds. 
‘It’s sometimes difficult to say what the significance of an artist is but, in Isa’s case, her influence can be clearly felt among so many artists of the past two or three generations. We just presented a large-scale exhibition by <a href="https://www.artbasel.com/catalog/artist/7866/Monica-Bonvicini" target="_blank">Monica Bonvicini</a>, who, when I met her in the early 1990s, was graduating from what’s now the Berlin University of the Arts. Isa was a professor there and, even then, you could feel her influence in Monica’s practice, and that was 30 years ago.

‘At the same time, in the early 1990s, I began working very closely with <a href="https://www.artbasel.com/catalog/artist/7585/Dan-Graham" target="_blank">Dan Graham</a>, who was a dear friend of Isa’s. Whereas Dan was incredibly precise and would reduce line or space to the bare minimum, Isa was always more about taking a form or an item as it was. They were a surprising spectrum of creativity and, all the while, exerted deep influences on one another. 
‘On studio visits for the ‘Greater New York’ shows at MoMA PS1, or in Shanghai and Beijing for a large-scale survey exhibition for K11, I have encountered countless emerging artists for whom Isa is a reference. She’s both a catalyst and an inspiration. After you’ve seen that Isa allowed herself to be courageous enough to put certain materials – like an umbrella, office lights, and plastic chairs or flowers – together and make a sculpture or object in that way, there’s no going back. That possibility is then out there for any artist to follow.

‘For me, being an artist is about finding form. If you think about the empirical process of Isa’s early works – the
Ellipsoids and Hyperbolos of the 1970s or, in the case of some of the later works, assembling images from a couple of newspapers from a specific moment in time – her work might have the lightness of putting a few objects together or simply carving out the logic behind a particular mathematical form. Either way, she finds a form that is present, that is new.
‘Every city has an institution that represents the very notion of a museum, and I think the Neue Nationalgalerie might be that here in Berlin, especially for visitors who come to the city. We are becoming more porous: In the case of this exhibition, this means we want to be open to people coming to us with their ideas. I believe Isa’s show will naturally attract responses, and I’ve thought lately that I’d like to invite certain people – artist <a href="https://www.artbasel.com/catalog/artist/6932/Wolfgang-Tillmans" target="_blank">Wolfgang Tillmans</a> or collector Erika Hoffmann, for example – to show us their favorite work by Isa, and have them explain to us and to the public what they personally love about it.

‘At the same time, I often find myself asking, “What is a national gallery?” I remember when we started KW [Kunst-Werke Institute for Contemporary Art] and the Berlin Biennale, we cheekily wanted to call it the “international gallery” because national was something I – we, as Germans – never wanted to be. But then, if you do have “national” in your name, you think about who the national treasures are. Isa is one, without any doubt. Another national treasure is the late choreographer Pina Bausch, and we’ve asked her dance company, Tanztheater Wuppertal, to perform a Bausch retrospective in 2026. 
‘Sometimes an exhibition creates a dialogue with a building, and other times it creates a dialogue with the city. The recent reconstruction of the Neue Nationalgalerie, architect Mies [van der Rohe]’s only museum, is obviously something to extend to viewers through the lens of Isa’s art. From my years in the United States, I recognize what my colleagues there call a generosity of spirit, and this exhibition will show that generosity of spirit, especially in the simplest sense – also because you can view it from the outside. Everybody needs a window. And we are a window.’

Isabel Parkes is a writer and the deputy director of Callie’s, Berlin.
‘75/75’ is on view at the Neue Nationalgalerie, Berlin, from July 13 to November 27, 2023. Isa Genzken is represented by <a href="https://www.artbasel.com/catalog/gallery/1153/Hauser-Wirth" target="_blank">Hauser & Wirth</a>&nbsp;(Zurich, Hong Kong, London, Los Angeles, New York, Somerset, and St. Moritz), <a href="https://www.artbasel.com/catalog/gallery/1076/Galerie-Buchholz" target="_blank">Galerie Buchholz</a> (Berlin, Cologne, and New York), and <a href="https://www.artbasel.com/catalog/gallery/1103/David-Zwirner" target="_blank">David Zwirner</a> (New York, London, Los Angeles, Paris, and Hong Kong). 
Published on July 11, 2023.
Caption for full-bleed images, from top to bottom: 1.&nbsp;Isa Genzken in her studio, 2022. Photograph by Wolfgang Tillmans. Courtesy Galerie Buchholz. 2. Isa Genzken, Blau-grau-gelbes Hyperbolo 'Elbe', 1981.Private collection Berlin. Courtesy Galerie Buchholz/VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2023.2.Isa Genzken. 75/75“, Neue Nationalgalerie, 2023. DER JUNGE GEWICHTHEBER, 2004.(Private collection Rhineland). Photography by Nationalgalerie – Staatliche Museen zu Berlin / Jens Ziehe. Courtesy Galerie Buchholz © VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2023.

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The director of Berlin’s Neue Nationalgalerie on the seminal German sculptor and the retrospective ‘75/75’, celebrating her life’s work and ongoing influence

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