Isa Genzken

Born 1948 in Bad Oldesloe (Germany), she lives and works in Berlin.

This Berlin-based artist has been building up her multifaceted body of work – sculptures, installations, photographs, collages and films – for more than thirty years now. For her, the materials she chooses and the combinations in which she presents them are vitally important. She obtains these items in superstores, DIY shops and suppliers of architects’ materials. In the past she used wood, plaster, epoxy resin and, above all, concrete: the materials of the modern era. Today she is concentrating on plastic, synthetic materials and reflective surfaces and consumer goods such as designer chairs and camping chairs, kitsch figurines, dolls and plastic animals. Her works and installations often juxtapose glamour and poverty, euphoria and disillusion, majesty and sadness, as if to metamorphose the popular ideals and codes of modernism into contemporary totems.

A selection of her paintings is being shown at the Musée les Abattoirs.