"'Who Do You Love?' - Isa Genzken in conversation with Wolfgang Tillmans"

“You know that I don't give interviews much? There were just a few – with Lawrence Weiner, with Danny MacDonald that I published with in the 'I Love New York, Crazy City book' – do you know this one? And also the 2005 interview with Wolfgang Tillmans for 'Artforum' – that was one I particularly enjoyed. I was always a bit scared to do an interview, especially with Lawrence Weiner, I mean, he is just so articulate – he can really speak about the work so well! And did you see this interview I did with Kai Althoff – 'Why I don’t do interviews?'”

“Well, I knew I was an artist the moment I woke up in my mother's belly and, as an artist, I shouldn't have to give interviews.. ..in some parts of the world, you get scrutinized for saying the wrong thing about art and in other regions, you get scrutinized for saying nothing at all.”

“I always wanted to have the courage to do totally crazy, impossible, and also wrong things.”

“I was twenty-one when I first went to New York, and I was so fascinated by the architecture and glad that something like that existed and that I was able to have this visual experience that I thought to myself, this is where I want to live. To me, New York had a direct link with sculpture – that must have been it. Although at twenty-one I wasn't a sculptress yet, I was just starting my studies and I didn't even know what I wanted to do.. .New York is a city of incredible stability and solidity. And then the height of the buildings – that impressed me, like the people who always seemed a bit happier than the Germans in the street. When I came back to Germany it seemed to me that it wasn't particularly nice, my visual surroundings – it was all so dreary. And modernism hardly features at all in Germany. Okay, there was Bauhaus and there was this and that, but modernism is practically non-existent in architecture.”

“One time I even said to him , 'Architecture is a catastrophe in Germany; we've got to change that.' And he told me, 'Go ahead, you can always sign for me if you ever need to.' I've never taken him up on the offer, though!”

“Yes. Basically, I can read your photography and see what moves you. What really moves you and not just faked emotion. I don't think it's good when it's like that in art – but unfortunately it often is. That's why I like Bruce Nauman, for example, as a sculptor. With his work, sometimes I have really thought to myself, that's simply beautiful.. .Above all, it is difficult enough to depict something that moves you deep down inside. But that's ultimately what art is all about, and that's also what appeals to people – if an artist can do it.”