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2024

Layr, Vienna, Austria (forthcoming)

2023

15.12.2023 – 07.04.2024

Your and your vim
Aspen Art Museum
Colorado, USA

02.09.2023-07.01.2024

Good Year
MARTa Museum Herford
Herford, Germany

03.05-14.06.2023

Nature wills it
The Ranch
Montauk, New York

04.11-10.12.2022

Apple Red Cranberry House
Bortolami
New York

27.08-11.12.2022

Forest Through The Trees
Laumeier Sculpture Park
St. Louis, Missouri

2022

30.04-30.07.2022

Auf dem Asphalt botanisieren gehen
Klosterfelde Edition
Berlin

30.04-11.06.2022

Looking Through the Threshold
carlier gebauer
Berlin

17.02-28.10.2022

ALDO ROSSI’S SLEEPING ELEPHANT
Belvedere
Vienna, Austria

2021

26.10.2021–29.01.2022

Lives of an Object
ARCH
Athens, Greece

12.06.-17.10.2021

Lichtenfels Sculpture
Austria

28.04.-20.06.2021

I Think I Look More like the Chrysler Building
Vleeshal
Middelburg

27.03.2021-28.03.2021

Friend of a Friend
Warsaw
Poland

2020

09.12.2020-30.01.2021

Babysteps into Masochism
Emanuel Layr
Vienna, Austria

10.09.2020-07.11.2020

Fate of a cell / Η Τύχη ενός Κυττάρου
Martinos
Athens

19.09.2020-31.10.2020

Ice to Gas
Pedro Cera
Lisbon

11.09.2020-17.19.2020

Various Others
Sperling, München
Munich, Germany

09.11.2019-08.03.2020

R.M.M. Rockefeller Center
Rockefeller Center
New York, NY

09.11.2019-08.03.2020

L’homme qui marche
Kunsthalle Bielefeld
Bielefeld, Germany

2019

27.09.2019―26.01.2020

My Fetish Years
Museum für Gegenwartskunst
Siegen, Germany

11.01.―16.02.2019

Germanic Artifacts
Bortolami
New York, USA

2018

13.10.―22.12.2018

Positioner
Matthew Marks
Los Angeles, USA

15.05.―21.07.2018

THEMOVE
Emanuel Layr Gallery
Vienna, Austria

03.03.―13.05.2018

An Idea of Late German Sculpture; To The People Of New York, 2018
Kunsthalle Zürich
Zürich, Switzerland

09.03.―22.07.2018

Between The Waters
Whitney Museum of Art
New York, USA

17.03.―28.04.2018

Embrassade
Fons Welters
Amsterdam, Netherlands

2017

19.01.―08.04.2017

Year Of The Monkey
Galerie Emanuel Layr
Rome, Italy

28.04.―30.07.2017

SCHREI MICH NICHT AN, KRIEGER!
Schirn Kunsthalle
Frankfurt, Germany

09.04.―30.05.2017

Vertical Gardens
Antenna Space
Shanghai, China

03.06.―03.09.2017

Die Kommenden
Sprengel Museum
Hannover, Germany

14.09.―25.10.2017

in awe
Kunsthalle Exnergasse
Vienna, Austria

06.2017

Art Basel Parcours
Art Basel
Basel, Switzerland

2016

07.06.―11.09.2016

Outrageous Acts and Everyday Rebellions
Kaufmann Repetto
Milan, Italy

28.01.―27.02.2016

RUN, RUN, RUNWAY
Golsa
Oslo, Norway

27.02.―26.03.2016

Heartbreak Highway
Real Fine Arts
New York, USA

17.06.―27.08.2016

My History of Flow
S.A.L.T.S.
Basel, Switzerland

04.07.―16.09.2016

fat center trash land 1―7, 2016
Small scale Sculpture triennial Fellbach
Fellbach, Germany

09.09.―05.11.2016

Fieber
Emanuel Layr Gallery
Wien, Austria

04.07.―16.09.2016

In Bed with M/L Artspace
9th Berlin Biennale
Berlin, Germany

03.12.2016―12.02.2017

Available Light
Kunstverein Braunschweig
Braunschweig, Germany

2015

2015

Surrounding Audience
The New Museum Triennial
New York, USA

09.2015

Emerging Artist Fellowship Exhibition
Queens
New York, USA

26.02.―04.04.2015

Looking at you (revived) again
Off Vendom
New York, USA

28-05.―16.05.2015

One step away from further Hell
Vilma Gold
London, UK

23.11.2015―08.01.2016

National Gallery 2―Empire Map
Chewday’s
London, UK

22.02.―05.04.2015

The problem today is not the other but the self
MINI/Goethe-Institut Ludlow 38
New York, USA

2014

09.05.2014-19.07.2014

Warm Math
Balice Hertling, New York
New York

05.2014

Frieze New York
Frieze Art Fair at Randall’s Island
New York, USA

02.05.―07.06.2014

Bloomington: Mall Of America
Bortolami Gallery
New York, USA

27.04.―01.06.2014

YES, I’M PREGNANT
Skulpturen museum Glaskasten
Marl, Germany

22.03.―17.05.2014

Geburt und Familie
White Flag Projects
Saint Louis, USA

08.―09.2014

Piracanga Freedom?
Two Hotel, Piracanga Beach
Bahia, Brazil

06.06.―14.08.2014

Chat Jet (Part 2), Sculpture in Reflection
Künstlerhaus KM
Austria

06.06.―03.08.2015

Revelry
Kunsthalle Bern
Bern, Switzerland

13.09.―18.10.2014

DIE
Parisa Kind
Frankfurt, Germany

2013

14.12.2013-08.02.2014

Soft Wear
Sandy Brown
Berlin

24.02.―21.04.2013

From One Artist To Another
Kunstverein Wiesbaden
Germany

13.09.―18.10.2013

On Thomas Bayrle
The Artist’s Institute
New York, USA

05.2013

The Doors
Skulpturenpark Köln
Köln, Germany

27.06.―09.08.2013

Freak Out
Greene Naftali Gallery
New York, USA

27.09.―09.11.2013

Love of Technology
Museum of Contemporary Art
North Miami, USA

2012

05.02.2012-22.04.2012

Hang Harder
Neuer Aachener Kunstverein
Aachen, Germany

12.2012

Lena Henke: First Faces, book launch at Karma Books, New York
Karma
New York, NY

13.01.2012-19.02.2012

If I had eight hours to chop down a tree, I would spend six sharpening my axe
Kunstraum Riehen
Basel, Switzerland

01.06.―29.07.2012

Core, Cut, Care
Oldenburger Kunstverein
Germany

14.09.―21.10.2012

H․ H․ Bennett, Lena Henke and Cars
1857
Oslo, Norway

2011

15.06.―07.08.2011

Andrei Koschmieder puts
Real Fine Arts
New York, NY

23.04.―18.06.2011

Schlangen im Stall, “snakes in the barn”
Galerie Parisa Kind Frankfurt
Frankfurt am Main, Germany

2010

05.2010

WIR UEBER UNS
Neue Alte Bruecke Frankfurt
Frankfurt am Main, Germany

08.2010

you have four eyes, (First ladies)
V 8
Karlsruhe, Germany

10.2010

Scandinavian blonde
Mousonturm
Frankfurt, Germany

28.11.2009 - 23.02.2010

Stone Temple Playground Collection
Kornhauschen Aschaffenburg
Aschaffenburg, Germany

28.11.2009 - 23.02.2010

Tokyo Hotel und deine Mutter
Literaturhaus
Frankfurt, Germany

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09.11.2019-08.03.2020
R.M.M. Rockefeller Center
Rockefeller Center
New York, NY





LENA HENKE
R.M.M. (Power Broker Purple), 2020
Steel, fiberglass, rubber, paint
78 3/4 x 67 x 70 7/8 in (200 x 170.2 x 180cm)
LH9388

LENA HENKE
R.M.M. (Organ, Organ, Organ Red), 2020
Steel, fiberglass, rubber, paint
78 3/4 x 67 x 70 7/8 in (200 x 170.2 x 180cm)
LH9389

Lena Henke creates objects that respond to the social and architectural constructs of a given space. The artist’s two new sculptures, R.M.M. (Power Broker Purple) (2020) and R.M.M. (Organ, Organ, Organ Red) (2020), produced for Frieze Sculpture New York and presented at Rockefeller Center, combine her interest in New York City’s history of urban planning with personal history.

Henke, who was raised in an equestrian family in Germany, consistently employs horse motifs in her work. As amalgams of her own visual lexicon with that of architect and urban planner Robert Moses, Henke’s new sculptures examine both New York City’s pre-automotive transportation as well as Moses’ controversial designs. Moses was notable for his quasi-totalitarian views on mass transit and city planning, and infamously bulldozed entire communities in order to erect highways. As Simon Baier writes in his text for Henke’s 2020 solo exhibition at the Museum für Gegenwartskunst Siegen in Germany1, her sculptures exist, “scattered about in various colors, materials, and sizes: hooves or entire horse feet appear again and again. These body parts often fuse with other forms, things, and environments, merging in surreal combinations. They cast themselves into archways, interface with walls, with entire city boroughs, streets, landscapes, or plants.”2

In their new context, set before Rockefeller Center’s formal Art Deco-influenced complex, the large, colorful hooves become objects of irrational, organic flux. They are an ode to the many equestrian symbols in and outside of the Rockefeller buildings; the horse motifs in Carl Milles’ three-part work Man and Nature (1937-41); Attilio Piccirilli’s glass block panel Youth Leading Industry (1936), installed over the Fifth Avenue entrance at the International Building North; and Robert Garrison’s fantastical stone bas-relief, Morning, Present, Evening (1932) including the head of the mythological horse at the 1270 Avenue entrance.

R.M.M. (Power Broker Purple) (2020) and R.M.M. (Organ, Organ, Organ Red) (2020), are composed of cast fiberglass and covered with a soft rubber granulate normally used for flooring on athletic fields or playgrounds one might find throughout an urban landscape. The sheer size of these new works was based on Henke’s own height, and determined with the help of Le Corbusier’s, Modulor,3 an anthropometric scale of proportions, placing her own body in direct relation to the Rockefeller Center’s canonical architectural space. Utilizing the same mold as Robert Moses’ Mother Drives Through Wallis (2018), which Henke originally exhibited at her solo show at the Kunsthalle Zurich in 20184, she presents these hybridric building-cum-horseshoes in a new urban context.

1 Lena Henke – My Fetish Years, Museum für Gegenwartskunst Siegen, Germany, 2020.
2 Baier, Simon. “The Anti-Family of Man.” LENA HENKE: My Fetish Years, SPECTOR BOOKS, 2020.
3 Corbusier, Le. Le Modulor. Editions De Larchitecture Daujourdhui, 1948.
4 Lena Henke: An Idea of Late German Sculpture; To the People of New York, Kunsthalle Zürich, Switzerland, 2018.

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