The Isa Genzken show at Buchholz has an archival feel interspersed with some bangers. It’s focused on Genzken’s public projects. Actually, no, it’s what it says on the label—Projects for Outside—and so it excludes public commissions like the U-bahn station she did with Richter. And yet there is the OG 1982 World Receiver. And a Kunstverein edition World Receiver further in. And original documentation of her original 1987 World Receiver installation in a music store window. Which counts as a project for outside, I guess? I have to say, the World Receiver in the window of Buchholz’s new space on 54th St is so close to the glass, the only way to photograph it is from outside. So yes. Also, yes, this was the Manolo Blahnik store.
The show is anchored by outdoor project maquettes Genzken made in 2015 for Okwui Enwezor’s Venice Biennale. [There are also two New Buildings for Berlin maquette/sculptures she made for Enwezor’s documenta in 2003.] A hyperlocal example is an unrealized installation planned for the 53rd St facade of MoMA during Genzken’s 2014 retrospective.
The 2015 maquette feels so reasonable, I wondered for a second why this installation didn’t happen. The 2013 collage study next to it offers a possible answer: the Goodwin & Stone building’s sixth floor penthouse terrace was packed in ways that were probably dealbreakingly expensive.
Then I realized the installation did happen, closer in scope to the maquette, at the entrance to the retrospective.
The Brooklyn Rail is hosting a talk today by Laura Hoptman, who curated the MoMA show, and Ebony L. Haynes, who organized the other Isa Genzken show on right now, at David Zwirner’s 52 Walker St space, and I am simply too seated. [update: it’s now on youtube.]
Or I will be. First I have to figure out where to print my own bootleg poster for the Buchholz show, which features a 2000 collage of a view that doesn’t exist anymore of a project that never happened and makes no sense.
Putting World Receiver antennas on Philip Johnson’s AT&T Building is perfect; making the proposal for the nazi architect’s building with a synagogue in the foreground is even better. Calling it Deutsche Bank Proposal, when Deutsche Bank had no discernible connection to the building, but did, at the time, happen to occupy a pink granite post-modern skyscraper two blocks away? Confusing as hell! Still, I want this.
[post-curators conversation update: I did not realize that Genzken has stopped making work as she deals with an illness. There were whole passages of Haynes and Hoptman’s conversation where they talked about her in the past tense, which seemed wild. Also, there’s a layer of importance to her work that derives from its specific time and context, which can get lost. e.g., making concrete sculptures with references that countered a certain German, 1980s orthodox abstraction, as embodied, for example, by her then-husband Gerhard Richter. Hoptman had the sense, though not specific evidence, too, that MoMA curators were hesitant to show or acquire Genzken’s work out of fear of her ex-husband’s displeasure. Frankly, I have heard or sensed similar vibes at times about being afraid of upsetting artists like Richard Serra or even Jasper Johns. Art is weird.]