Daniel Bulatov

Daniel Bulatov
ANTI-MONUMENTS AT THE BEGINNING OF THE 21ST CENTURY: Isa Genzken and Irina Korina

#1 2021 (70), Special issue. GERMANY - RUSSIA: ON THE CROSSROADS OF CULTURES

At first glance, the German and Russian art scenes would appear to have had little in common over the past 20 years. On the one hand, you have Germany, occupying a leading position in the global art industry; on the other, you have contemporary Russian art. Global interest in the latter (aroused by the tinge of novelty associated with perestroika) is gradually fading, but, at the same time, it has not yet quite overcome its provincial inferiority complex. In this context, it is even more interesting to note remarkably similar phenomena that have appeared independently in both Russian and German art. One striking example of this is the convergence in a number of features of the artistic methods of Isa Genzken (b. 1948) and Irina Korina (b. 1977) that occurred in the mid 2000s and early 2010s. Given the different contexts in which each artist is immersed, their work shares very little in terms of themes or visual traits. Despite this, they are united by their method of choosing materials, to an extent by their attitude to form and, most importantly, by their profound rethinking of the very concepts of sculpture and installation.