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Museum of Modern Art opens Isa Genzken: Retrospective

The Museum of Modern Art presents Isa Genzken: Retrospective an exhibition on view from November 23, 2013, to March 10, 2014.

Spanning almost 40 years of Genzken’s inventive, audacious, and deeply influential artwork, the exhibition brings together more than 150 objects in an astonishing variety of techniques, including assemblage, sculpture, painting, photography, collage, drawing, artist’s books, film, and large-scale installations. A majority of the works in the exhibition are on view in the U.S. for the first time, including Schauspieler (Actors) (2013), a large-scale installation, while others have rarely been publicly exhibited anywhere. Isa Genzken: Retrospective is co-organized by The Museum of Modern Art, the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, and the Dallas Museum of Art. The exhibition is organized by Sabine Breitwieser, Chief Curator, Department of Media and Performance Art (until January 31, 2013), and Laura Hoptman, Curator, Department of Painting and Sculpture, MoMA; Michael Darling, the James W. Alsdorf Chief Curator, Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago; and Jeffrey Grove, Senior Curator of Special Projects & Research, Dallas Museum of Art; with Stephanie Weber, Curatorial Assistant, Department of Media and Performance Art, MoMA.

Working across a diverse array of mediums, Genzken has been inspired by two grand themes: modernity and urban architecture. Her career has also unfolded in chapters, beginning in the late 1970s, and continuing without cease until today, when a new generation has been inspired by the artist’s radical inventiveness. Ranging from large-scale sculptures that limn Constructivist and Minimalist aesthetics; to rougher, more overtly architectural concrete works that conjure ruins; to paintings, photographs, and found-object installations that have redefined assemblage for a new era, Genzken’s body of work represents both a rare artistic freedom and a disciplined, almost obsessive sensitivity toward the relationship of individuals to their sculptural surroundings.