Iza Genzkin
The Whitechapel Gallery, April – June 2009
I hadn’t managed to visit the Whitechapel since it’s much discussed reopening and I have to admit that my main reason for visiting the current retrospective of the German multi media artist Iza Genzken was to explore the newly restructured space.
In a time where most of the exhibitions at high profile spaces arrive with a fanfare of commentary, it was actually quite refreshing to attend an exhibition by an artist I knew very little about.
Genzken is a 1960s graduate of the dynamic Düsseldorf Academy. Seemingly, she has a reputation as a challenger of the Modernist agenda. Her main concerns lie in tackling the relationships between public and private space, artistic autonomy and collective experience. The background comes largely from the reams of text that accompany the show, rather than within the work itself. What the work does declare, almost immediately, is that this is very much art about art again, folks.
The most dominant exhibits could loosely be described as sculptural, although photographs and other two dimensional work are represented. Some of these early pieces are certainly formally pleasing and tease at autobiographical narrative. Amongst the multi-media clutter, the large scale towers of primary coloured industrial glass pay testament to her love affair with New York, the worlds second best city. Her wooden carvings, two parallel op-art canoes, reference Bridget Riley and Brancusi with artschool efficiency and rephotographed 60s Hi-Fi advertisements appealed to my music-tech geekiness. However, the further she traveled from the 60s – and the further I traveled into the space - things started to unravel. Notebooks and decorated found objects seemed lazy and tired, even painfully juvenile. The more media she stirs into her multi-media-masala, the more diluted the narrative becomes, until the more recent work descends into a bizarre mix of collage and piled junk and emphemera. It’s dated in a way that made me feel like I was in a primetime 80s sitcom facsimile of a generic ‘modern artist’ studio – and not really in a good way.
Several years ago I traveled back up north to visit my family for Christmas. For many reasons it was the first time since my childhood that my mother had played host to such a comprehensive gathering of friends and relations. Ever the sentimentalist, she had put a heroic amount of effort into the Christmas meal and, as we took our places around the overcrowded table, the joy and pride on her face was tangible. As the carving knife hovered expectantly over the turkey, she took a moment to thank us all for coming together and told us how very happy she was to see everyone finally sitting down as a whole family. Heads bowed in a thoughtful silence, a silence that barely had time to register before it was shattered by my 80-year-old grandmother shouting, “Lesbians!”
Needless to say, that simple, random and totally unexpected outburst took ownership of the festive memory for years to come. My mother has long since suggested that this incident marked the first ripples of dementia or senility, but aside from that wonderful old womans legendary resilience, I only have to remember the devious sparkle in her eyes, as the dinner table descended into laughter and all attention was once again paid to her, to know this is not the case. She did that just because she could, because she craved that attention and because – family moments be damned! – she had been around long enough to earn the right do act any way she chose. It was just an outrageous reminder to my mum that she wasn’t the matriarch just yet.
It was this memory that most occupied my thoughts as I explored Genzkens later work and it was hard not to imagine her as a self-styled matriarch demanding attention in an ever more outlandish fashion from an audience who she had never quite manage to fully engage.
Every time she shifts in media or concept, a quick glance at the date reveals her trying to appropriate some contemporary trend, but always just a few years out. The worst revelation is just how thoughtless and facile the work becomes compared to her earliest work. She clearly had a talent at some point, but that seems long since abandoned. I’m aware that much of this is intended to be a critique of Modernism, but it’s laboured and – like a paralogical argument - ends up critiquing itself up it’s own arthole.
I don’t want to be entirely uncharitable, but the inconsistency of the work created a wholly disjointed feel to the retrospective – a disjointedness so prominent that it would even be quite difficult for a single artist to create by design. The pieces that demonstrated some promise, some layer and some skill or craft or thoughtfulness, ended up looking inconspicuous in the company of their awkward antecedents.
I think my description probably makes the exhibition seem more entertaining than it actually is. Overall, I couldn’t enjoy Genzkin’s erratic artwork because it’s innate schizophrenia somehow felt like a contrived facsimile of either ‘outsider’ art or a dated greatest hits of a dozen other contemporary pioneers.
The reason I detest the music of someone like James Blunt, with a passionate hate I could never muster for even the most pointless pop or obnoxious gabba hardcore, is largely because I love the artists he seems to aspire to so much. With someone like Dylan or Buckley, at their best, every lyric and word feels directly channeled from their heart or soul. It seems that they are musicians because they need to be and their work feels like a natural extension of themselves, something that takes form of itself, just barely contained by the medium that carries it. There is a sense of purpose and meaning that is innately real, whereas Blunt beats words and chords painfully into a distorted fifth generation copy of that realness, attempting to fool the listener into believing there is emotion and poetry entirely through confidence trick suggestion. It is that very banal familiarity to something meaningful, its pretense, that actually makes it appallingly offensive. It’s music for people who don’t like music.
I suppose what I’m trying to say, is that Genzkin – artistically speaking - comes across in my mind as some strange fusion of my Gran and James Blunt. She may have earned her place at the table through longevity and tenacity, but her work alone is all the more underwhelming for its aspiration.
C+
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