David Zwirner is pleased to announce VACATION, a solo exhibition of work by Berlin-based artist Isa Genzken, curated by Ebony L. Haynes. Shown at the gallery’s downtown location in Tribeca, VACATION features a selection of work spanning the late 1970s to the 2010s, including little-seen film, painting, photography, and sculpture such as significant concrete forms from the 1980s and a grouping of her Weltempfänger (World Receivers).
With a career spanning over five decades, Genzken has pursued a multidisciplinary practice that considers the shifting boundaries between art, design, architecture, media, technology, and subjectivity. Attuned to both the legacies of the twentieth-century avant-garde and the materials and forms of twenty-first-century global society, Genzken’s work viscerally interrogates the impact of an increasingly commodified and interconnected culture on our everyday lives. The show title revisits a solo exhibition of the artist’s work, Urlaub, which took place at the Frankfurter Kunstverein in 2000. The term translates from German to English as “vacation” or “holiday,” and for the exhibition at David Zwirner, delves into Genzken’s proclamation that “the entire art system urgently needs a vacation,” offering a respite and moment of reflection. The installation of VACATION embraces this time of interlude as well as the artist’s long-standing engagement with architecture and the materials of the built environment.
