Isa Genzken was born on 1948 in Bad Oldesloe and currently lives and Works in Berlin, Germany.Urlaub possesses a ridiculous elegance, caught between high design and holiday festivity. Drawing from the Minimalist concept of objective abstraction, Genzken’s work straddles the spheres of formalist purity and narrative interpretation. Entrenched in the process of making, Genzken’s work is the result of her own intimate interaction with materials, tempering the procedure of formal decision-making with the spontaneity of imaginative play. Kitsch objects such as plastic leaves, figurines, and an oversized wine glass carry their own associative references while operating as neutral compositional elements of shape, colour, and texture. Urlaub exudes escapist fantasy while retaining a refined order, culminating as surreal microcosm of caprice vs. rationale.

Isa Genzken EDUCATION:

1993-1997
• Düsseldorf Art Academy

1993-1975
• Studied Art History and Philosophy at the University of Cologne

1971-1973
• Berlin University of Fine Arts

1969-1971
• Hamburg College of Fine Arts

SOLO EXHIBITIONS

2005
• Der Spiegel 1989-1991: Isa Genzken, The Photographers Gallery, London, UK
• Kinder filmen, Galerie Daniel Buchholz, Cologne, Germany
New Work, David Zwirner, New York, NY

2004
• Wasserspeier and Angels, Hauser & Wirth, London, UK
• China Art Objects, Los Angeles, CA
• International Art Prize, Cultural Donation of SSK Munich, Munich, Germany

2003
• Isa Genzken, Kunsthalle Zürich, Zürich, Switzerland [catalogue]
• Empire Vampire Teil II, Städtische Galerie im Lenbachhaus Kunstbau, Munich, Germany
• The Wrong Gallery, New York, NY

2002
• Haare wachsen, wie sie wollen, Skulpturenprojekt Galerie Meerrettich (Josef Strau), Berlin, Germany
• Museum Abeiberg Mönchengladbach [catalogue]
• Wolfgang-Hahn-Preis, Museum Ludwig, Cologne, Germany

2001
• Galerie Daniel Buchholz, Cologne, Germany
• Magnani, London, UK
• Science Fiction/Heir und jetzt zufrieden sein, AC-Saal (with Wolfgang Tillmans),
• Museum Ludwig, Cologne, Germany [catalogue]

Conclusions:
Isa Genzken has been making a name for herself with an oeuvre including sculpture, photography, film, video, works on paper and canvas, collages and books.

What to Do Next…

If you want any information about Isa Genzken or looking for his paintings please visit us on http://www.saatchi-gallery.co.uk/artists/isa_genzken.htm

Made from metal, wood, and vynil, Tom Burr’s Bitch, Immediately After Vynil, balances the seductive qualities of his materials with formalist objectivity. Incorporating references to minimalism, design, and social space, Burr infuses the manufactured aesthetic and sleek lines of 70s sculpture with an ultra-modern sensibility, incorporating narrative associations. Through his sparse presentation and refined media, Burr’s arrangement compels with almost fetishistic elegance; its domestic size and ‘naughty’ details create an evocative subtext to the austerity of his composition.

BIOGRAPHY

1963 Born in New Haven
Lives and works in New York

A more satisfying relationship between text and objects is “staged” right now with the works of Tom Burr. Very well written texts address the social, architectural, and psychological space of the fluorescent, mirrored 42nd street milieu that one finds all over the “peep showed” world. The short instructive texts (”blue movies”, “blue laws”, “peep scumatrium” …) open up a rich conceptual parenthesis which the artist filled with a series of uncompleted light interior short hand architecture in varying sizes.

This explains why artists who pursue these strategies run the easy risk of ending up arrogant, cynical, arbitrary and formalist in their object choice and presentation. To be informed by an analytical and critical approach often doesn’t change this trap. Previous shows by AFA and others have exemplified these failures.In most cases somebody else produces the work for them using standard industrial materials. The function of these objects is often descriptive, illustrating of a set of ideas expressed more accurately by textual means. The ideological value of the present or absent texts is mainly to justify the uninteresting objects in their expository function which are as quickly to be interchangeable as produced.