like an alchemist – ina genzken mixes art and life … (memento mori with mask from venice) image © designboom

german pavilion in the giardini venue isa genzken: ‘oil’. the title expresses ‘oil’ as a raw material, over which people across the globe struggle and on the other hand it creates abstract, visual, phonetic, sensory and material methaphors: ‘oil is an expression of our time’. it reduces the complexity in which we live to a symbolic imagethat becomes the crisis scenario of the future, while simultaneously being stylised into an expression of freedom and wealth.

isa genzken at venice art biennale 07 tiny skull image © designboom