Issue link: http://papercitymagazine.uberflip.com/i/1094656
78 talk about the spaces we find ourselves in, both physically and emotionally. Art vocabulary lets us down in so many ways. How to compare the soaring expanses of a glassy atrium to those tiny kiosks selling sunglasses? What about the kind of frail pink tape that wraps and droops over metal railings, casually directing people by the thousands to seek alternative routes? How does the trampled Mardi Gras scene — mashed underfoot, rude and soupy — look fresh in every selfie? Is it cubism, minimalism, surrealism that make today's condos so flippable? How then, should we describe those big aluminum panels that Genzken makes? Stuck with foils and festooned with tapes and banners, plastered with museum postcards, spray paint, and computer printouts. They are like doors of abandoned refrigerators left on the streets, tagged. Genzken engages in wild material innovation, performing giddy shifts in scale: oversized wine goblets that swallow the Real Housewives are plaza sculptures in front of vertical corporate troughs; hanging metal sculptures twist and swing like hip-hop moguls' necklaces; castoff clothing is made stiff with paint, becoming petrified patrons of high fashion in low materials. I love Genzken's mannequin pieces. Today, every panel discussion on CNN dissolves into what can be described as a bad couple's fight — and the government resembles a meeting of alcoholic adult- children. But before this, Genzken was a maverick, long ago modeling the family circle as a cage match, with mothers wearing feather boas and gilets jaunes; and kids naked with plastic bags over their heads. No respect. All possibility. How can her work be so violent and yet so full of invention and possibility? Isa Genzken will be honored with the Nasher Prize, a $100,000 juried award recognizing outstanding contributions to sculpture, Saturday, April 6, during the Nasher Prize Gala. Cheryl Donegan is a New York-based artist, who works in video, painting, performance, textiles, installation and other mediums, in an exploration of sex, gender, art making, and art history. "HOW CAN HER WORK BE SO VIOLENT AND YET SO FULL OF INVENTION AND POSSIBILITY?" — Cheryl Donegan Isa Genzken's Hallelujah (Yellow), 2012 Isa Genzken's Hallelujah (New Museum), 2012 (continued from page 78)