Isa Genzken Finds Chaos in Order
The brilliant seventy-seven-year old German-born artist Isa Genzken makes work that, like her near-contemporary David Hammons’s, not only defines her epoch but shatters it. Assembling sculptures with a variety of materials, ranging from concrete and plastic children’s toys to film and pantyhose, Genzken has, throughout her career, put together shows that are environments rather than installations—environments that destabilize the viewer by playing up the artist’s love of schematic improvisation. To enter a Genzken show is to see that she has a plan, but there’s no road map: her work is best viewed or, rather, understood when you accept the open-ended order she employs to create the elements of her pieces, resulting in a kind of Teutonic chaos.
You can see this at work in the terrific show “Projects for Outside,” at Galerie Buchholz (through April 25), which looks closely at public spaces; New York is a big feature here, along with its architecture and scale. In Genzken’s hands, examining height and content becomes a fantastic exploration of the politics that define a world divided between the queer and the straight, a universe delineated by grids that do not, even with the best of intentions, stay orderly, because how can they? We’re humans living every day in the mess of history, whether we know it or not. There are some pieces in another show of hers currently on at David Zwirner on Walker Street, “Vacation” (through April 18), that are similar to those you’ll see uptown at Buchholz. Pieces from the great “World Receiver” series, on view here and at Buchholz, are very funny; they’re blocks of cement with aerials attached, but what does cement receive, or communicate? Yet, whereas the Buchholz show has a very clear and elegiac focus, the show at 52 Walker—which takes its title from Genzken’s proclamation that “the entire art system urgently needs a vacation”—offers a different and, in a way, more contained, vanilla view of the artist’s far-ranging intellect and sense of play amid the rubble of the world. Still, no matter how schematic she gets, you can’t hold Genzken down. She’s there to trouble you because she’s a firm believer in good and bad trouble, that which makes the world go round.—Hilton Als
About Town
Joe Mantello’s wrenchingly beautiful, simple staging of Arthur Miller’s “Death of a Salesman” is set in a decaying underworld, a cavernous garage with colossal, chipped columns and a red sedan that looms like an altar. Lying in this crypt is Nathan Lane’s Willy Loman, a tragic humbug, his delusions contradicted by the ruins around him. Lane’s is a tender take on the role: he’s a little guy punching above his weight, not a bruiser gone to seed—a hype man haunted by two pairs of sons, past and present, who roam, wearily, through his splintered psyche. It’s a soulful interpretation that’s perfectly matched by Christopher Abbott’s quietly turbulent Biff, whose heroic breakdown at Lane’s knees—“I’m nothing!”—is so powerful that it threatens to bring the columns tumbling down.—Emily Nussbaum (Winter Garden; through Aug. 9.)
In the early nineties, the British indie band Heavenly struck out in pursuit of the most infectious guitar-pop melody. Born from the embers of the eighties band Talulah Gosh, Heavenly, led by the singer and guitarist Amelia Fletcher, shuffled forward with her riffy, effervescent playing style, gradually growing more sophisticated across four LPs and an EP, without any loss of buoyancy. Right before the release of “Operation Heavenly” (1996), Amelia’s brother, Mathew, the band’s drummer, died by suicide, and the band’s remaining members retired its name. They reconvened for a one-off, as Marine Research, but broke up in 1999. This February, after a nearly thirty-year absence, Heavenly returned, with a new album, “Highway to Heavenly,” shambling on with its holy mission.—Sheldon Pearce (Bowery Ballroom; April 18.)
The début album by Raye, “My 21st Century Blues,” felt like a win for artists. Nearly a decade in the making, the LP was issued independently by the British singer-songwriter after a public dispute with and separation from Polydor, her label of seven years, which she claimed would not release her record. When “My 21st Century Blues” was finally liberated, it was a revelation—personal and singular, curious and self-confident, blending blues, house, and dancehall with pop, and breaking the record for the most Brit Awards wins in a night. Her new album, “This Music May Contain Hope,” is even more ambitious, if a bit melodramatic, its wide-screen cinematic drama splitting the difference between earnestness and theatricality.—S.P. (Radio City Music Hall; April 15-16.)
This spring is seeing a rare flocking of “Firebird” ballets: first, there was the return of Alexei Ratmansky’s, at American Ballet Theatre, and upcoming is the familiar appearance of Balanchine’s at New York City Ballet. But the most important sighting of the mythical Stravinskian fowl might be the revival of Dance Theatre of Harlem’s 1982 version, migrating back to New York for the first time in more than twenty years. Choreographed by the Balanchine associate John Taras, it flourishes in the lush Caribbean fantasy of Geoffrey Holder’s sets and costumes. The Harlem dancers also ignite more recent works, by Robert Garland and William Forsythe.—Brian Seibert (New York City Center; April 16-19.)
A London-based friend introduced me to the choreographer Kyle Abraham’s work at Sadler’s Wells Theatre in 2025, and, while watching his piece “An Untitled Love,” I experienced a feeling that I hadn’t had in the theatre in quite some time: love—not only for the dancers, the choreography, and the setting but for the ethos, which was, ultimately, about how joyful connections can be, should be. At Skirball, A.I.M by Kyle Abraham performs the New York City première of Abraham’s “Cassette Vol.1.” The piece draws on the choreographer’s love of eighties pop culture, on R. & B. and New Wave music, on artists who came before him, Bill T. Jones and Arnie Zane among them. I can’t imagine that the work isn’t a poem—poetry in motion—itself.—Hilton Als (Skirball; April 16-18.)
Howard Brookner’s extraordinary 1985 documentary, “Robert Wilson and the Civil Wars,” makes one weep for what could have been, and what was. We watch as the great and charismatic director Wilson collaborates with six international theatre companies, in Germany, Japan, the U.S., and elsewhere, to put on a twelve-hour work about war, power, and humanity for the 1984 Summer Olympics, in Los Angeles. We learn something about Wilson’s childhood in conservative Waco, Texas, and his process, as described by collaborators such as the composer Philip Glass and the performer Sheryl Sutton. Tall, queer, and handsome, Wilson navigates the fund-raising world with an elegance and calm that belies the cliché of the “fiery” director, while Brookner’s camera is anything but aggressive.—H.A. (BAM Rose Cinemas; April 17-23.)
On and Off the Avenue
Rachel Syme dives into a trendy online bargain bin.
I hail from a long line of women who love a good bargain: flea-market hagglers, dollar-bin divers, Maxxinistas. The thrill of the deal can get me into trouble, though; a few years back, I forbade myself from acquiring stuff merely because it was on sale. Imagine my surprise (and slight trepidation) then, when I recently came across Martie, a splashy-looking online discount site that was packed with items I already liked—Olipop sodas, Partake cookies, Momofuku noodles, Bonne Maman jams, Bastide soaps, Fishwife smoked salmon—all heavily marked down, some at more than seventy per cent off. What was the catch? I called up one of the founders, Kari Morris, who explained to me that, in 2021, she and her business partner, Louise Fritjofsson, founded Martie after seeing a gap in the discount-retail marketplace. Morris and Fritjofsson’s first venture, in 2019, was a line of artisanal baking mixes. One holiday season, they found themselves with more than a thousand unsold boxes of vegan gingerbread mix. Their options were to donate the excess inventory, sell it off to an old-school resale chain like TJ Maxx, or chuck it. They felt that there had to be a more exciting way to give perfectly usable products a second life—so they created it. Martie now buys bulk overstock from trendy companies, then ships orders from its Texas warehouse. Many of the constantly rotating goods have a best-by date within six months, but it also sells some brand-new items, both from emerging businesses hoping to find new fans and from brands that are sunsetting (such as, currently, Areaware, a soon closing home-goods purveyor). “We want to take the ‘ick’ out of liquidation,” Morris told me. She also noted that, while Martie’s ultimate mission is to reduce waste, in these precarious times, the savings are the biggest draw. “A lot of people want to do good,” she said. “But everyone wants a really good deal.”
P.S. Good stuff on the internet:
An earlier version of this article misstated the name of the gallery where Isa Genzken’s show appears.