Isa Genzken: 75/75

July 13 - November 27, 2023

The Neue Nationalgalerie in Berlin is honouring Isa Genzken on the occasion of her 75th birthday with the exhibition «Isa Genzken: 75/75».

The exhibition includes 75 sculptures from all of the artist's creative phases from the 1970s to the present day. Major works on display include the 10-metre-long "Grey and Black Hyperbolo 'MBB'"(1981), "Atelier" (1990), "Venice" (1993), "Nefertiti - The Original" (2012) and "Actors" (2013). The presentation in the upper hall of the Neue Nationalgalerie is reminiscent of exhibitions of classical antique collections in its arrangement of individual sculptures. Models, archetypes and measurements of man and modern society emerge in the line-up.

Isa Genzken's "75/75" at Neue Nationalgalerie

The sculptures of the German artist, born in 1948, are not hewn from one material, but embody in their heterogeneous materiality the technologies, plastic, concrete, décor and functional objects that pervade everyday life today. Genzken takes these remeasurements and changing framings over into the true, the beautiful, the absurd and the exaggerated. Her work starts from actualities, such as a window or an actor:inside figure, which she changes and distorts into her own realities and formal language. The individual and also she as an artist, her own biography, are tools of this questioning of ideals of Western society and its types of production.

Exhibition Shows Works from the 1970s to Today

"The works are meant to function more as moving images than sculptures; you see a new image from every angle. Nothing is rigid or two-dimensional, but cinematic," said Isa Genzken in an interview in 2016. The visitors find themselves being questioned through the confrontation of familiar everydayness. Collages of life worlds emerge. Not least through reflections in the surfaces of the objects, the viewers themselves become actors, tools and scales in the exhibition space.

Happy Birthday, Isa Genzken

On Monday 27 November 2023, the museum will be open for a special opening to celebrate the artist's birthday. The details of this event will be announced at a later date.

At a Glance

• Exhibition: Isa Genzken: 75/75
• Location: Neue Nationalgalerie
• Start: 13 July 2023
• End: 27 November 2023
• Opening Hours: Tuesday, Wednesday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday 10 a.m. to 6 p.m.; Thursday 10 a.m. to 8 p.m.; Closed on Monday
• Admission Fee:
  €14, reduced fee €7