This large-format collage book was created in Berlin around 15 years ago. It is both a personal diary and an artistic manifesto. In it are portrait photos of Genzken and her friends, cuttings from advertisements and glamour magazines, male pin-ups, illustrations of fences and grates from animal enclosures, mostly bare trees, bushes and forests, columns, facades and strange details from her own work and installations, postcards of historical paintings as well as handwritten notes.

The overwhelming number of images obtains a surprisingly harmonious form. Genzken uses brown sticky tape and silver textured textile tape; black, blue, red and strongly vibrant green neon papers to give the book a dramatic structure. In this way she creates windows and doors with views in and views out.

The format of the pages gradually becomes larger through the course of the book, giving it an astounding physicality. It grants an insight into the thought and work of one of the most important contemporary artists of our time.

Published on the occasion of Isa Genzken’s major retrospective at Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, 29 November 2015 – 6 March 2016.