Using insubstantial commercial materials to depict what seems indestructible, Isa Genzken’s sculptures explore the tension between permanence and transience. Drawing on the legacies of Constructivism and Minimalism and often involving a critical dialogue with Modernist architecture, Genzken’s works comment on the way we build and destroy our environments, which are an expression of hope as well as a monument to our consumption and destructiveness. Following 9/11, Genzken created a series entitled “Empire/Vampire, Who Kills Death” (2002–03), using her characteristic assortment of disposable materials such as plastic vessels, toy figures, and other detritus to depict scenes of post-apocalyptic devastation and confusion. For her installation Oil, the artist transformed the German Pavilion at the 2007 Venice Biennale into a saturnine and futuristic Gesamtkunstwerk (the German word for “total art-work”).