Open Sesame! surveys the work of German sculptor Isa Genzken, tracing her artistic development from the late 1970s through to today and accompanying her major survey exhibition organised by the Whitechapel Gallery, London and Museum Ludwig, Cologne. This definitive monograph explores the recurring formal and thematic concerns in Genzken's practice, placing her work in the broader context of contemporary art. The publication features twenty essays that each focus on an individual series of body of work, from the artist's early Ellipsoids through to her most recent installation, Ground Zero. This is the first retrospective of a major European artist whose fusion of photography, paint, architecture and found objects into the realm of sculpture has influenced generations of younger artists. The show commences with early floor works from the 1970s and continues with a sequence of windows, rooms and buildings cast from plaster and concrete in the 1980s. Living and working in Germany and in New York, Genzken's column structures of the 1990s draw on the vertiginous, reflective forms of Manhattan skyscrapers, adapted in 2000 into proposals for improvements to the architecture of Berlin. Published on the occasion of the exhibition Open Sesame! at Whitechapel Gallery, London, 5 April - 21 June 2009; and at Museum Ludwig, Cologne, 15 August - 15 November 2009. English text.