Art's keen sense for the spirit of the times – Isa Genzken at the heart of it

Artists and artworks often demonstrate an extraordinarily fine sense of the zeitgeist; this can sometimes be seen in social changes, as a retrospective look at the SculptureProjectsMünster 2007 proves.

The artworks at the 2007 Münster Sculpture Projects (not entirely by design) were themed around shredded consumer waste, intended to provoke the jaded art viewer with an urban background and a rather overindulged appetite for consumption. They also represented a return to nature, something the organizers hadn't planned at all.

At that time, Pawel Althamer , the Polish artist working between sculpture , performance , video art and installation , created the not only intellectual “Sciezka” (path) into the void – he started a footpath in the middle of a meadow not far from the centrally located Aasee lake, which ran perpendicular to everything that could be reached via paved paths in this recreational area.

More precisely, this path simply led out into nature, right into the middle of a cornfield and beyond it even further into more nature.

Althamer has demonstrated double foresight with his quintessentially Polish footpath (the Poles are considered masters at immediately creating paths for direct connections in large areas with carefully laid-out roads): The scarcer nature becomes in the living environment, the more people seek greenery in their respective surroundings.

The more crowded the major art events of the summer are (e.g., the Sculpture Projects in Münster, the documenta in Kassel, the Venice Biennale in 2007), the more people simply seek nature instead of even more high culture.

Althamer's path was thus used with pleasure; even at documenta, Wilhelmshöhe Palace with its mountain park attracted more people at times than the high art on display.

In retrospect, Althamer's political assessment was a sarcastic bullseye: To the horror of democratically minded Europeans, a large portion of the citizens of his homeland, which was only freed from Soviet influence in 1989 and has only been a member of the EU since 2004, find themselves on a sinister path 10 years later…

Althamer was not alone in his keen sense of the longing for more nature; several other artists evaded the exhibition concept of "urban space" and preferred to wander into the greenery, singing about water or allotment gardeners, or having a few yew hedges planted in the park.

In retrospect, all these artists were so right about "natural" things: Since 2009, "vertical farming" been practiced in more and more mega-cities, gardens have been cultivated and increasingly created again for several years, balconies (and public tree pits, and every free patch of earth in some medium-sized cities) are being planted again, and more and more facades, roofs and walls are becoming green.

Other artists remained in the real world, only distancing themselves from the urban city concept insofar as, instead of pleasing urban beautification, they unleashed a barrage of consumer critique: Guy Ben-Ner 's recycled bicycle ; Mike Kelley 's "petting zoo" with uncanny depth ; Silke Wagner's giant human advertising column, which leads the consumer-tempest-dumbed back to public discourse; Michael Asher 's well-maintained caravan melancholy ; shredded consumer art (Buddy Bears, Hummel Hummel figurines, etc.) by

Andreas Siekmann; and Isa Genzken, who tells endless and unpleasant stories about the excess waste: bit.ly/2Eq6gJV.

"Perhaps the mega-summer of 2007 will be the beginning of a new modesty," some said at the time in view of this (mostly viewed with a critical eye) gathering.

Today, 16 years later, many German citizens are experiencing this new modesty, whether through voluntary renunciation or political failure.

“This art cannot be sold,” the environmentalists, water purists, bicycle and reason advocates in Münster also quietly cried out; today, a collapse of the high-priced art market no longer just whispered about.

Also in 2007, the exhibition "With Art Against the Right" place in a small village on the German-Dutch border called Oeding.

Only when Germany has finally averted the consequences of this premonition, which have since occurred, should we allow ourselves a typical Isa Genzken laugh : Relaxing, liberating, as after a great concentration (modified quote from the cultural scientist Diedrich Diederichsen).