Wolfgang Tillmans and Isa Genzken, Berlin, 2005.

Isa Genzken: I can give you a little tour of my studio. This is a piece for which I finally found a title today. It’s called Kinder filmen [Children Who Film]. I find it’s a beautiful title.

Wolfgang Tillmans: That’s what it looks like, children filming.

IG: [Laughs.] This one of the dolls is new, too.

WT: Is that one a dog?

IG: No, it’s actually a little bear. But the ears are no longer there, and that’s why one doesn’t quite know what it is. The children have wreaked some havoc—they’re romping. [Laughter.]

WT: You suggest that they’re just playing, but do you also see that they’re somehow a bit shocking? They look a little dead.

IG: You think dead, already? No. I mean, if one can hold oneself in that position, then one isn’t dead. When one is dead, one is somewhere. . . . I see my work at the moment—as opposed to in the past—as having something to do with the innermost more than something to do with the exterior. One can always explain the exterior. But the inner side one finds difficult to explain. And these sculptures have more to do with the inner view.

WT: Yes.

Isa Genzken, Empire/Vampire III (detail), 2004, plastic, lacquer, metal, fabric, grains, and wood, 70 27/32 x 27 1/2 x 17 7/10". From the series “Empire/ Vampire, Who Kills Death,” 2003– 2004.

IG: Do you understand? I see the children as if they just had to do something, as if they had to play twisted. I don’t approach it so formally, in the sense of, “This is the mother and this the little child.” Rather, it’s more like a feeling that I have for children, for their craziness. But the inner one, not the learned one. Do you know what I’m talking about?

WT: Yes, sure.

IG: That’s why the formal in my more recent works is daring in a way because there is little to hold on to, little one can tie things to, except for a sense I have when I am actually engaged in the process of construction and things come together. Yet works like the “Empire/Vampire” sculptures [2003–2004] still came from an aesthetic stance that I’ve had for thirty years, a stance I continue to develop. The intention is to get a different reaction from the “already known.” I can’t explain it any other way.

WT: You’ve always got to allow yourself a new way of accessing your own work. When you’re not working with a formula, ideas have to find their own way and take their own time to surface.

IG: There is nothing worse in art than, “You see it and you know it.” Many artists seem to work from a theory that they invent, so to speak, and which accompanies them through life, a theory they never deviate from. That’s a certainty I don’t like. After all, art is often on the edge in the sense that in one moment it seems really very close, and the next moment you find it doesn’t. You can see this quality in the artists I love: Mondrian, Ellsworth Kelly, and Carl Andre. I always ask myself, “Who did you love when you were young?” Michael Asher, Lawrence Weiner, Dan Graham, Andre—almost only Americans. And then I ask, “As you got a little older, who did you love then?” Wolfgang Tillmans and Kai Althoff—that’s it. And I find that a little comforting. There are hundreds of different approaches, and you have to engage with all of them in some way and ask yourself, “Is there something to it?” You have to always keep your eyes open because the art world is not a department store. It’s not that you just see a trifle here or there.

Detail of unfinished sculpture in Isa Genzken’s studio, Berlin, 2005. Photo: Wolfgang Tillmans.

WT: I have a hard, judging gaze, but I also have a benign one. That comes from a feeling that these are all people who do their best. I was very impressed by a statement Andy Warhol made in an interview I read in the ’80s. He was asked, “Why do you always say everything is great?” Warhol said, “Because life is hard. Everything is hard. Baking a cake is hard.” And this feeling that everything is really difficult gives me a point of access, in the sense of a basic respect and appreciation. You can’t go around thinking everything’s crap.

IG: NO! That’s not at all how I mean it. Well, there are hundreds of artists, and when you open an art journal, you see this and that, and this sells well and that, too. In order to get out of the confusion of all that’s on offer, I ask, “What do I enjoy the most aesthetically? What can I get the most out of?” The others all rob me of energy because they do something that I don’t understand. That’s not arrogance on my part—it’s self-preservation.

WT: Yes, everybody wants full attention, but you only have a certain amount to give, and you have to be careful with it. We could probably like a lot more things if we would let them get to us in a different way. But, for example, the works of the youngest generation today have a different syntax because they come from a different context, and we can’t decode the syntax so easily anymore. A relative appreciation of all sorts of things outside of your generation is much more difficult because you have to confront so many new and different strategies. A lot falls through the net when you look at it.