Isa Genzken: Art that is difficult to understand?

Keywords: Understanding art, Isa Genzken's rose, The lie of simple solutions, The meaning of art, Diversity of sculpture

Among the search results dissected above was an article in which Isa Genzken stated that her art was difficult to understand.

She is certainly right about that; Isa Genzken didn't simply lure (and block) the art world with large, colorful (balloon) animals or similarly striking brand art, but rather, over approximately 50 years, with almost inexhaustible energy and even more curiosity, she created an incredibly diverse and multifaceted body of work.

Genzken is one of the most constructive, but also most versatile sculptors of our time ; she cannot and does not want to provide simple solutions, but strongly demands that the recipients of her art engage in their own thinking.

This also means that her art is not well suited to simple, quick interpretations by media art experts and performance/publication-oriented art historians; the number of failed attempts at interpretation made about Isa Genzken's art could fill a thick volume of art satire.

Genzken has a wealth of stories to tell; because her thinking remained vibrant throughout her life, these stories take on new content in every exhibition project. Since she consistently experiments with the “materials of our world” and just as persistently integrates a wide variety of experiments in the processing of these materials, each of these stories also receives its own exclusively tailored layout (which is, of course, also adapted to the respective environment).

If an artist doesn't find their easily interpretable brand early on, but instead develops their art throughout their life, that may be in the spirit of art, but not in the spirit of people who want to consume art like other products. The limited meaning of most consumer goods doesn't register with these people at all; when they are challenged to search for meaning by a work of art, they are completely overwhelmed.

How easy it is to blame an artist whose art defies simple interpretations… For journalists who need or want to do their job with minimal effort, Isa Genzken is simply “unpredictable”.

Thus, Genzken's art is difficult to understand; but for thinking people, looking away is simply not the solution when things get difficult. For unthinking people, it is, or there is the negative impact of looking away, which ultimately harms everyone. But there are still masses of people out there who, in our age of ignorant, wealthy people, are slowly becoming despairing and want Isa Genzken's and other art to remain just as "difficult.".

Isa "Rose" is a very good example of how simple her art can appear and how deceptive this simplicity is. The rose was first installed in 1993 in Baden-Baden in the park of the Villa Schriever (commissioned by Frieder Burda, home of the Frieder Burda Foundation) – a perfectly realistic red rose, simply enlarged to a gigantic scale.

But this rose bears Isa Genzken's signature and isn't immediately recognizable. The rose, which reaches a height of 8 meters and ends somewhere at the level of the villa's first floor, can conceal the house, however narrow it may be: View image (Click here)

It can merge with the house to form a unit of two equal partners: Show image

It can also retreat completely into the background, delicate and modest as a rose is (and manages to do exactly that in the foreground).

A rose is a rose is a rose? Not at all, not even a Genzken is a Genzken is a Genzken; and the bit about the rose wasn't even true in the poem from which the saying comes anyway.

Because the “Rose” moves on and in 1997 stands in front of the new Leipzig trade fair grounds, bit.ly/2Agp8wx; at first glance, it seems like a place where the rose can really be shown off to its best advantage.

And yet, the “Rose” uses modern building construction to point out in radiant splendor that it is precisely such building constructions with their forecourts, surroundings, access roads, parking lots, recreation areas, toilets and garbage storage areas that reduce nature to rare specimens of solitary beauty…

The view of the “Rose” from a visitor’s perspective represents the height of irony. In fact, the rose stands in a location where, during visitor hours – that is, during the times when the people are present for whom this rose stands as a public artwork – it is, after all, just a single, very small rose in all its size, compared to square kilometers of landscape that have been ruined by ugly, functional architecture.

Or it is almost maximally underwhelming; the New Museum of Contemporary Art in New York can surpass this: There, a replica of the Leipzig Rose was installed “Façade Sculpture Program” “Rose II” just arriving: Show image , it doesn't get any better than this: Show image , not even with a ship on the facade: Show image .

There are some facades where neither roses nor ships, but only a complete renovation of the entire surrounding area could make a difference (the museum itself is great, but the impact of a design, beyond the validity or confusion of the various broken windows theories, ultimately depends very much on the details). However, this complete renovation is out of the question, and probably should be, because the coveted inner-city buildings have long belonged to psychopathic social parasites who hide behind real estate companies and, of course, have renovations paid for by others (whether directly by the citizen or indirectly by the state).

Here are some suggestions from the online art magazine Hyperallergic : [View image ] There are more ever-blooming roses by Isa Genzken, for example in front of an art center in Tokyo, and Rose III recently 'Isa Genzken. I Love Michael Asher,' in Los Angeles…

The assumption that the downtown buildings adjacent to the museum no longer belong to the most socially responsible individuals or companies is plausible, especially after American society demonstrated a striking propensity for self-harm in the last election. Unfortunately, the reasons why fear and envy lead to self-destructive behavior are not yet fully understood.

The voluntary descent into the (intellectual) underclass could be related to the fact that excessive fat mass prevents food energy from reaching the brain, or that greed actually consumes brain matter in a neurologically effective way. Perhaps it's also becoming apparent that intelligence is declining steadily anyway, ever since flame retardants, pesticides, and countless other new chemicals—whose effects on the human body are insufficiently researched—were injected into almost all mass-produced goods.

This fact can be scientifically proven for the last two decades, see: “Environmental Hormones – Are We Losing Our Minds?” (ARTE documentary from 2017, directed by Thierry de Lestrade and Sylvie Gilman), but the effects began long before that.

How this urge towards self-destruction can be stopped is still completely unexplored; but Isa Genzken certainly can't be blamed for it, she fought for (overpriced) gallery space in Cologne's Bismarckstrasse near the cathedral several decades ago and would probably have preferred to transform the New York facades into a suitable environment for her rose (and thus also for people) with imagination and color.

But somehow the rose also had that effect, otherwise we viewers wouldn't be able to/wouldn't start wondering two decades later whether it was due to such exclamation marks in the form of artworks that the first cities (e.g. Berlin) insist on roof and facade greening for suitable new buildings.

We leave it to your discovery to uncover the meaning behind the many other artworks by Isa Genzken, which can also be admired in public spaces. For those who have already ventured from the gym into the realm of brain training, this offers a rewarding playground with long-lasting and meaningful engagement.

In the article about Isa Genzken's art education, you will learn about the comprehensive knowledge Isa Genzken acquired before creating this playground.