Topical Cream’s 2024 Honoree is Lena Henke
Topical Cream is pleased to announce Lena Henke as their 2024 Honoree. Every year, Topical Cream recognizes an artist whose efforts have made a meaningful impact on their community. Lena Henke’s work is focused on the relationship between feminism and labor. Henke was chosen because of her longstanding commitment to Topical Cream and her dedication to its mission. “Lena has been an integral part of Topical Cream since its founding. The way she thinks about art and civic engagement is truly compelling. Lena also has an incredibly generous spirit; it was really special to witness her this summer with the New York Girls Writing Circle, where she gave so much time and care to introduce these young minds to the intersection of art and civic engagement. We are so grateful to Lena and Stefania Bortolami for this incredible support.” said Lyndsy Welgos, Topical Cream Executive Director.
Henke and her gallery Bortolami (New York), will donate a sculpture “Spaziergang in Lemgo,” in support of Topical Cream’s New York Girls Writing Circle, a free summer writing workshop for New York City girls and gender non-conforming youth.
To mark the occasion, Paulina Pobocha, Chair and Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art at the Art Institute of Chicago, spoke with Henke about this honor and her remarkable contributions.
Paulina Pobocha: As 2024’s Topical Cream honoree, how does it feel to be recognized by an organization you’ve been connected with since its inception? Are there particular milestones or moments with Topical Cream that have deeply impacted you?
Lena Henke: I’m proud to be this year’s Topical Cream honoree, and it’s a perfect opportunity to have this conversation with you, as someone else who’s been there “all along the way.” I remember first arriving in New York and being absorbed into a scene that, at the time, felt very underground. Scrolling through all 578 weeks of TC’s Instagram presence, I’m reminded of the highly clinical, “cyborgian” style of the early 2010s, which was completely new to me. A later project that always comes back to me is Avena Gallagher’s Freesale in 2019, the temporary storefront “anti-capitalist group therapy” on East Broadway. That highlighted the non-profit as an important platform supporting people beyond those in the arts. I’ve learned a lot from the broader community that surrounds TC––a process that’s still ongoing. This summer I had the pleasure of leading a class, which gave the opportunity of seeing my work through the eyes of the next generation.
Looking at your work from the last ten years, it strikes me that not only has the work changed and evolved, as expected, but that in recent exhibitions, the sculptures seem to be in greater dialogue with one another. I’m thinking especially of Lena Henke: Good Year, I think I look more like the Chrysler Building, and Ice to Gas. The individual sculptural elements that comprise these exhibitions seem to enter into a narrative, one that isn’t necessarily easy to read or decipher, but one that could be felt and one that encourages investigation. This reminds me of an early work of yours: Yes, I’m Pregnant! (2014), which was essentially a collection installation at the Skulpturen Museum in Marl, but you deployed the sculptures as characters in a story you created.
I never saw that show, but you printed an accompanying zine, which I thought was brilliant and very funny. Indeed, I would argue that the work was very “pregnant” with ideas that you have turned to since.
It’s true. It’s been a vehicle ever since: developing an exhibition in the form of a comic book, using the sculptures of a museum collection as the cast. The plot unfolded around an unwanted teenage pregnancy. The story was the beginning of letting form “work” on its own. I created a narrative where I was also one of the protagonists, played by a Matisse sculpture. It gave me the possibility to see the work from two different angles. This method of reflecting on bodies in the studio comes back from time to time. The comic book later transformed into a sculptural self-portrait against the backdrop of Manhattan (City Lights (Dead Horse Bay), 2016). Funny thing, I first started working with the comic as a format when sharing my studio with an illustrator; it all boils down to synchronicities.
I actually remember that studio—that’s such a long time ago …
You came out to my very first studio then, an old warehouse next to the BQE in Williamsburg. So much started for me there. The architecture was important, but also the time spent next to the BQE itself, watching the masses of cars zoom by and later learning about the urban design of these streets, the so-called public spaces, and so on. From here grew an interest in how they came about, were planned, built, and transformed. What are their functional interrelations, what is added, what is or was demolished? In New York, you encounter much more of this permanent cycle of creative destruction than you do elsewhere. The elixir is change. Monument protection carries much less weight than the need for the constant shedding of the city.
How change is readable—how we react to and respond to it—was Kasper Koenig’s core idea for the Skulptur Projekte Münster.
This is something I’m thinking about a lot right now. How much time do you need to identify a change in style and concepts within the medium of sculpture? What has happened to sculpture in the past ten years?
What has happened to sculpture in the past ten years? It’s impossible to speak in platitudes, but it is interesting to look at your work and the work of sculptors of our generation. I’m not sure if this is accurate, probably more anecdotal than anything, but my first thought is that there is a greater interest placed on permanence—in terms of materials, in terms of scale, even an embrace of monuments—new monuments, not commemorative statues or anti-monuments. Equestrian statues! You might have something to say about that, I suspect.
Such an interesting thought, I like that and feel I’m witnessing similar motions. Trisha Donnelly’s marble pieces come to mind, just to give an example. This idea of rapid subtractions in deep time. These kinds of sculptures move me through their interplay of material, mode of production, and synchronicity. A position on permanence I can align with. Right now, I look at the logics at work within my own sculptural oeuvre and like that I have found a rigorous but vast method of addressing them: humor vs. fetish, front vs. back, sculpted space vs. architectural space, “whole” objects vs. fragmentation …
But back to your question. Yes, the horse, it always seems to “ground” my sculptures … Looking back it almost feels ironic that I used to downplay my love for this creature while studying in Frankfurt. It’s nicknamed cut-throat Städelschule for a reason: there was no place for sentimental gestures. Only in New York did I understand that this is where the energy lies. The horse is directly tied to the problem of modern sculpture and its history. The traditions of equestrian statues are long and old: too many men on horseback have stood as symbols of authority and power. Even after being supplanted by automobiles, the horse continues to symbolize technological mastery and speed. Working with the infrastructure of the city made it easy for me to use horsepower.
Recently, I’ve found myself using the figure of the horse as a “substitute,” coming from a perspective of lust and play. I can’t escape my upbringing, my roots and history in rural Germany. Having grown up around animals shapes how I sculpt and act, but not always the final work per se. Within the family of art historical horses, I like to look at sculptures from the early classical period, this heavy stylization, that seems so lifelike. The beginnings of naturalism are interesting, too. Often these pieces can be viewed only as severed parts. Feet and legs as the remnants of ancient casts. Body parts that have been broken off are usually good starting points for formal explorations …
Wow, you have to say more about the figure of the horse as a “substitute”—or more broadly, horse or no-horse, the figure as a “substitute.” Do you mean deploying the figure as a vehicle for formal experimentation? How, then, do lust and play fit into this picture? You have all the ingredients to construct a fetish object: substitutes, body-parts, lust, play—but I don’t think that’s where you are going.
The substitute can act as a vessel for desire while also standing in the “firing line” of its violence. I won’t allow myself to go there––it’s somehow too dangerous and too easy at the same time. I have to put myself on a leash. Instead, I adopt the role of the amused voyeur, intensifying the inversion of subject and object. Perhaps what I am also trying to invoke is the emotional terrain of a youthful, almost adolescent passion—one that appears to draw near to its object of affection but, in reality, remains curiously distant or detached. Travesty plays a role, too; maybe that is the part where “play” is most at work.
Which reminds me again of Yes, I’m pregnant!
In the end, my sculptures may be more concerned with me than it … haha!
Exactly. And yet, you have been able to avoid relying on biography—as far as the viewer is concerned, whether or not you rode horses, for instance, has little bearing on how the work is read. I almost wish we avoided that topic—though the horse in sculpture is not a neutral subject (is anything neutral?). The stories you construct, however, follow their own logic. The lead character, Lena, in Yes, I’m Pregnant!, has her own backstory that we can call her biography. Do you see this in your recent work—in how you conceptualize an installation, even if it’s not front and center?
The older I get, the more I have the possibility to pull from. “Mid-career” could happen at any moment! In a recent text, Simon Baier proposes a “Carrier Bag Theory of Sculpture,” arguing that “the potential of sculpture lies precisely in the fact that it is neither completely subsumed within nor completely removed from its […] context.” In my work, I try to pull from different vessels, cater to the need for things to function alone as well as together. First, there’s this haptic, site-specific process, usually starting with architecture, and at some point, it all turns, and whatever happens, happens. This intermediate position is the final, emotionally complex outcome.
Age confers wisdom, and also strange body aches. Let’s see what you do with that.
Please consider supporting Topical Cream’s New York Girls Writing Circle.
Paulina Pobocha is the Chair and Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art at the Art Institute of Chicago, where she relies on her vast and diverse expertise as an art historian, writer, and curator specializing in art created between 1900 and today. In her role, she leads the Modern and Contemporary Department, building on the existing success of the department’s program of acquisitions, exhibitions, and gallery rotations.
Prior to joining the Art Institute, she served as the Robert Soros Senior Curator at the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles, where, in collaboration with Essence Harden, she is organizing the next edition of the Hammer’s Made in L.A. biennial, surveying art from the greater Los Angeles region, opening in fall 2025.
Paulina spent the majority of her career in the Department of Painting and Sculpture at MoMA; she was central to the conception and display of MoMA’s modern and contemporary collection galleries. She has also organized and co-organized numerous exhibitions, including Thomas Schütte, on view through January 18, 2025; YOU ARE HERE* Contemporary Art in the Garden (2023); Guadalupe Maravilla: Luz y fuerza (2021); Constantin Brancusi Sculpture (2019); The Long Run (2017); Rachel Harrison: Perth Amboy (2016); Robert Gober: The Heart Is Not a Metaphor (2014); and Claes Oldenburg: The Street and The Store (2013). She received her BA in art history from the Johns Hopkins University and her MPhil, also in art history, from the Institute of Fine Arts, New York University. She lectures widely, has served as a critic at the Yale University School of Art, and is a frequent contributor to Texte zur Kunst.