isa genzken

it's hard to decide how to categorize isa genzken's work. is she a sculptor, a photographer, or an experimental architect? after studying at the kunstakademie düsseldorf, she began her career making elongated neo-minimalist sculptures. in the late-80s she made a project on the german newspaper, der spiegel, isolating images away from their captions, forcing the viewer to reengage with history visually. in the late-90s she worked on a series of sculptures (that may or may not be architectural models, it's hard to tell) in reaction to the international style entitled fuck the bauhaus. the work i've selected is from a series called empire/vampire and while only some of these tabletop works include photographs, they are all about the world of film and images. the work deals with the way that cinematic narratives can be displaced to promote imperialist wars. however one decides to characterize isa's work (an intuitive reaction to post-fordist capitalism?) it seems to embody the way the world feels now. see more of her work here.

[all isa genzken. from empire/vampire. 2004]