Mommies Dearest

There are numerous vectors [1] that circulate around this body of work, both gaining and receding in influence, but the steadiest, most persistent, are relationships [2]. Specifically, my relationships to the objects of Isa Genzken and Cosima von Bonin. I carefully state “objects” here because I do not know these artists, I know of them [3], but I certainly know their objects. I would even say that I know their objects intimately. We’ve spent so many nights drinking and talking late, so many mornings over coffee, all those long walks through New York City, we’ve folded laundry listening to music [4], you get the idea. Their objects have been mothers to me - mothers, not fathers. Mothers are radical, they force you to remain fluid and porous in your relationship to them, to be like something you are not. Which leads me to my description of how I see my objects relating to Isa Genzken’s and Cosima von Bonin’s work; grandchildren [5] unique in themselves, but related to and exerting pressure on each other to have a past, present and future, demanding that each help the other to live. -Lucas Knipscher 1 - Zobernig’s evil goatee, the Twin Towers (I have forgotten Tower #1 but cannot forget Tower #2), new construction in NYC as some of the most successful sculpture I’ve seen, MET antiquities and their functional beauty, the false prophet ‘NEW’, fabric’s fluid state in relation to bodies, the Witches’ delphic ‘Double Double’ in MacBeth, Mindlessness, Paul Thek and Susan Sontag talking late into the night at Ratner’s, Ruins both real and virtual and their necessity in NYC, can you Evil Twin yourself?, architecture made for algorithms, and Tristan Garcia’s ‘The Chance and The Price’. 2 - Ellen Langer, Grace Lee Boggs, Peter Sloterdijk, Danah Boyd, Helen Fisher, John A. Powell, Brené Brown, Bob Thurman. 3 - Jutta Koether’s essay in the Isa Genzken catalog published by Mousse, black and white self-portraits of Isa Genzken recovering in a hospital bed, eating breakfast on a verandah, balancing an ellipsoid in a large warehouse like space. Isa Genzken’s interview with Wolfgang Tillmans that ends with “There are a lot of unhappy people and that’s fucked up.” Cosima von Bonin as a young woman dancing; posing in black with an assault rifle; walking in and out of a Zobernig video with an art work under her arm, her ‘waving from an island’ press release from a show at Petzel, documentation of her shows with Kai Althoff, and of course, all the anecdotes about the strange, mythologizing behavior of both. 4 - Folding laundry is like making photographs and I always listen to music when I make photographs because it’s dark. 5 - Thank you to Margaret Meade for her essay, “On Being a Grandmother”. Lucas Knipscher (b. 1979, Washington, D.C., USA) lives and works in New York, NY. Recent exhibitions include Rachel Uffner Gallery, New York, NY; Federico Vavassori, Milan, IT; miart (with Thomas Duncan Gallery), Milan, IT (solo), David Lewis, New York, NY; White Flag Projects, St. Louis, MO (solo); Andrea Rosen Gallery, New York, NY; Swiss Institute, New York, NY; Vilma Gold, London, UK (solo); Andrew Kreps, New York, NY; Sculpture Center, Queens, NY.

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