Galerie Dennis Cooper presents … Rosemarie Trockel

 

‘Rosemarie Trockel is widely regarded as one of the most important and influential conceptual artists in Germany. Her sculptures, collages, ceramics, knitted works, drawings and photographs are noted for their subtle social critique and range of subversive, aesthetic strategies—including the reinterpretation of “feminine” techniques, the ironic shifting of cultural codes, a delight in paradox, and a refusal to conform to the commercial and institutional ideologies of the art system. The Potsdam-based artist has been associated with the gallery since 1982.

‘Trockel made her mark in the 1980s with a series of machine-knitted wool paintings that superficially mimic the aesthetics of abstract paintings. They are rendered in monochrome or feature rhombic patterns, checks, stripes and classic knitting patterns, but also speech bubbles, trademarks including “Made in Western Germany” or the Woolmark, and logos such as the Playboy bunny or hammer and sickle. Rife with art-historical references, they draw upon Pop, minimalism, Op art and modernist abstraction. Trockel confronted the patriarchal dominance of the art world with a material more evocative of womanly housework than an artistic medium—one that was associated with virtuous diligence and had historically been used to temper women’s imagination and ambitions.

‘Trockel’s sculptures are characterized by a similar interplay of virtuosic irony, aesthetic-analytical sensitivity and socio-political provocation. One example are Trockel’s iconic hotplate works, for which she transforms the hotplates on electric cookers into wall reliefs, floor objects or sculptures that resemble loudspeakers and record players. The artist’s sculptural oeuvre spans from the so-called Schizo-Pullover (1988), a sweater with two necklines, to Jesus figures whose sex is revealed under a loose loincloth. It also includes a series of “animal homes” that playfully imagine dwellings for animals, going so far as to convert a wig into a House for Lice (1994). The artist has also been designing so-called Moving Walls since the early 2000s, works made of coated aluminum discs that are attached to a wall like moving sequins, transforming the wall into a picture surface that refracts light in various ways. The artist’s objects are almost always defined by a focus on the viewer’s particular physical experience in their perceptive interaction with the artwork. Constantly shifting, they undermine viewers’ understanding of objects so as to generate new, unforeseen meanings.

‘Trockel’s oeuvre is fueled both materially and conceptually by a constant process of collecting, overwriting and re-ordering. This impulse becomes clearly apparent in her more recent Cluster (2015–present) works, which consist of digitally reconfigured photographs that the artist recombines with idiosyncratic logic to form a kind of visual diary for various exhibitions. Or in her more recent collages, for which she applies various materials to painted wooden frames in an assemblage-like arrangement. Some of these materials quote her own works, a method that allows her to bring her radically open, free and constantly changing creative process to the fore. Trockel regards the artwork as an unstable aggregate of form and concept, deploying this radical instability to dismantle a range of cultural categories, rules and dogmas.’ — Cord Riechelmann

 

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Further

Rosemarie Trockel @ Wikipedia
RT @ Sprüth Magers
RT @ Gladstone Gallery
Book: Rosemarie Trockel ‘Flagrant Delight’
Rosemarie Trockel’s Disquieting Puzzles
Rosemarie Trockel, by Kirsty Bell
Collector Box #8 Rosemarie Trockel
‘IN A TYPICALLY WRY, feminist twist on the trauma of a midcareer retrospective, …’
Always reinventing yourself – Rosemarie Trockel
How artist Rosemarie Trockel defies categorization
Rosemarie Trockel and the Body of Society

 

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Media

Rosemarie Trockel: Cosmos. Retrospective at New Museum New York

Lynne Cooke on Rosemarie Trockel: a cosmos

Rosemarie Trockel, Continental Divide, 1994

Rosemarie Trockel at Skarstedt, NYC (March 2010)

 

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Interview
from Artforum

 

ISABELLE GRAW: In the late `70s you applied to the Kunstakademie Dusseldorf but were rejected and ended up at the lesser-known Fachhochschule fur Kunst und Design in Cologne. What kinds of artistic or social possibilities did you see developing at that time? That is, how was what Bourdieu called the “space of possibilities” taking shape?

ROSEMARIE TROCKEL: Well, I had little “space” at my disposal: I suffered from a case of agoraphobia that more or less defined my life. For a long time I could leave my apartment only with great effort. My teacher Werner Schriefers, the former director of the school, always had to come to my house. In Cologne at that time there was a euphoric feeling that something new was just beginning, but because of my condition I found myself in an artistic vacuum. Such a phobia could be seen as a reaction to those spaces I felt drawn to but that seemed inaccessible to me.

IG: Were you able to go out at night? Did the phobia apply only to very crowded spaces?

RT: I could sometimes leave the house if someone accompanied me, and I would visit friends when not too many people were over. But the agoraphobia kept me from developing an artistic vision. I spent my time drawing, which I was “good” at. Also, I had no idea what it might mean for me to be an artist, since there were no female role models. My first contact with the art scene was in 1980, when I got to know several members of the newly formed group Mulheimer Freiheit. A little while later I met Monika Spruth. I had noticed her at a concert at school and started talking to her, and from then on we saw each other a lot. She was working as an urban planner in the Ruhr region. When she told me that she wanted to become an artist, I suggested that we rent a room together and work there.

IG: Were you two making collaborative works?RT: No, we were far too different for that. But we spent time together working as artists, which turned out to be extraordinarily helpful to me. Monika was a perfect companion. I visited my first galleries and exhibition spaces with her.

IG: What seemed promising about the Mulheimer Freiheit?

RT: They didn`t take the art world seriously-particularly Jif(ProQuest Information and Learning: .. denotes foreign text omitted.)i Georg Dokoupil, who had studied with Hans Haacke. They turned the myth of the artist on its head, doing things like making paintings together and promoting them as the work of one artist. They practically fetishized group creativity. That attracted a lot of artists, myself included. When Paul Maenz opened his first show with Walter Dahn, Dokoupil, and Peter Bommels, the gallery was totally packed-it was a real social event. But not exactly my world.

IG: In what way?

RT: At school we had tended to focus on ourselves, and now all of a sudden we were invited to participate in the Malaktionen, the group painting sessions. I profited from the situation, but the force of the group was too much for me. When I realized that their style had become my style too, I withdrew. I felt as if I were too weak, and yet at the same time too strong. I preferred to work alone or with Monika, where we each stayed centered, on our own.

IG: Nevertheless, it sounds as though the group dynamic was enormously important for you, because it was at once supportive and motivating. Finally there were people around who struggled with similar problems and with whom you could exchange ideas.

RT: Certainly. Conversations about art had become popular in the truest sense of the word. They were taking place everywhere, especially in bars.

IG: What was your work like at that time?

RT: Primarily I drew, but I was also painting and producing my first sculptures. Other than that, I made short Super-8 films, with which I`d been having a lot of fun since studying with filmmaker Robert van Ackeren.

IG: Around 1983 or `84, another group of artists came to Cologne, led by Martin Kippenberger. This created a competitive situation: on the one side the adherents of Mulheimer Freiheit, and on the other side Kippenberger`s group. Monika Spruth and her newly opened gallery formed a kind of third pole.

RT: Yes, Monika had given up making art after she decided that she wasn`t good enough. Shortly thereafter she curated her first exhibition in our studio rooms, with the work of several Mulheimer Freiheit artists.

IG: Wasn`t Paul Maenz already representing many of them?

RT: That`s right, but we had become very good friends with Maenz, so there was no competition with him, at least when it came to a group exhibition. The show was a huge success, and it prompted Monika to think about opening her own gallery. It was fun for her, and it was the beginning of a restructuring. I moved to the attic, and she opened her gallery. A little while later, I had my first exhibition there.

IG: Jutta Koether once described in a catalogue essay how Monika dedicated herself to the promotion of your work.

RT: You could see it like that. Monika took on a lot of my obligations for me because I was so confined by my agoraphobia. There were even times when she made appearances as Rosemarie Trockel.

IG: And how did you develop your interest in New York art-in appropriation and other nonpainterly processes that were more conceptual?

RT: Monika and I had taken a trip to New York and met a lot of people there. As in Cologne, there was the feeling that something was really beginning. We met Cindy Sherman and Jenny Holzer, whose work we had always wanted to show, and got along so well right from the start that the friendships have lasted to this day. In 1987 Pat Hearn put me in an exhibition with Eva Hesse, Mary Heilmann, Annette Lemieux, and Louise Bourgeois. Those were exciting, formative times.

IG: It`s remarkable that you are mentioning only women. At that time in Cologne, of course, men played the main roles.

RT: That`s true. But we didn`t resent them. Our contact with Mulheimer Freiheit even had a personal side; Monika, for example, had a relationship with Walter Dahn. We regularly went to the openings at Maenz-he had become a kind of cult star-and when Max Hetzler arrived the group expanded. You could say that Mulheimer Freiheit had opened the door to a space that led immediately into other spaces. In spite of all that, I felt drawn more to what was happening in New York. In Cologne a lot of energy was wasted in power struggles, while in New York the equal status of women artists seemed much less contested.

IG: Was it a conscious goal of yours and Monika`s to keep an eye out in New York for women artists in particular?

RT: Yes, but we weren`t looking to make a women`s gallery. From the beginning, we showed many male artists, like Andreas Schulze, George Condo, and Fischli & Weiss. Again, it was always friendship that started it. What in retrospect looks like a cleverly conceived strategy was in reality often the product of friendly liaisons, which of course tend to involve agreement in matters of content. But it`s true, we were definitely interested in showing women artists, which was rather unusual for Cologne at the time.

IG: How was your relationship to the artists at Max Hetzler? You were a close friend of Kippenberger`s-

RT: I met him in 1982. We worked together at times. He designed my first exhibition poster for Philomene Magers; I brought him images for his serial paintings. Still, I would describe our relationship as problematic. We each had our own peculiarities, and our artistic views were difficult to reconcile.

IG: What drew you to Kippenberger and his circle?

RT: For me it was instructive to witness the sparring between the Mulheimer Freiheit and the Hetzler group. The artistic strategies at issue were not so different from each other, as is often assumed. The mutual slaughter was also not entirely meant to be taken seriously. In the end, it was just about being on top. Kippenberger was a magnificent strategist. His precision and mercilessness fascinated me, even if they were often directed at me.

IG: Kippenberger intuitively knew one`s weak spots and talked about things that were usually repressed. But his system did not permit equality for women-one was always reminded of one`s woman-ness and mercilessly confined to it.

RT: Kippenberger`s system was indeed purely masculine, and naturally at some point I`d had enough of it.

IG: Was there a place reserved for you as a respected female artist in his hierarchy ?

RT: I would hardly say there was a place reserved for me. But if there had been a place reserved, it would have been there. His system played with the machismo of the art world. Kippenberger knew all about this problem, but he was subject to it himself. That was also the case for several members of the Mulheimer Freiheit, though they were less self-conscious than Kippenberger.

IG: Thinking back to the Cologne art bars and openings, I remember artists cultivating a rather raw, brusque attitude even into the late `80s, adopting an exaggerated authoritarian manner and going around with an air of conviction. You were much more reserved.

RT: Even if I`d wanted to be like them, it wouldn`t have worked. I only put up with Kippenberger`s system because I knew that something would come out of it for me. I was like a sponge slowly soaking it all up.

IG: You can see that attitude in your sculptures from the `80s. At the time, when Beuys was nearly fetishized in the art world, you were playing ironically on his anthropological aesthetic.

RT: I was captivated by Beuys, but his authoritarian behavior rather repulsed me. My relationship to him was characterized by ambivalence.

IG: How did the knitted pictures come to you?

RT: In the `70s there were a lot of questionable women`s exhibitions, mostly on the theme of house and home. I tried to take wool, which was viewed as a woman`s material, out of this context and to rework it in a neutral process of production. That simple experiment grew into my trademark, which I really didn`t want.

IG: You respond to the critical reception of your work in a variety of ways, picking apart the stereotyped remark or exaggerating the critic`s cliche, as with the knitted pictures and the Herdplatten-Objekte, your many stove pieces.

RT: The minute something works, it ceases to be interesting. As soon as you have spelled something out, you should set it aside.

IG: Since the `80s you have been considered the only female German artist who has achieved Institutional recognition comparable to that of canonized artists like Polke and Richter. One could propose that In Germany, at least In the `80s, there was room for only one successful “exceptional woman artist.” On the other hand, you were always Involved In collaborations, such as with Carsten Holler. It was as if you wanted to say to the world, “I am not the subject you`d like to make me into.”

RT: It doesn`t really bother me to be the object of misunderstandings or misapprehensions of the art machine. Think of the lists in the magazines Kapital and Focus, which use a system of points to measure artists` success for the benefit of art investors; you can see right away that they have nothing to do with an artist`s quality. Such representation in the media never interested me anyway. I was glad to be able to just let these things happen. In my opinion, you should never try to control or direct your own career. Control is possible only with respect to one`s self, and then only to a certain extent. You should try to stay centered, which of course is difficult, because you exist in the public sphere. The machinations of museums and galleries alone are enough to make you feel out of control. Resisting this is not always a sensible use of your energy. In the end, it`s an existential decision: To what do I devote my energy, and when do I decide to just let go?

 

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Show

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Ohne Titel, 2005

 

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Untitled (There is no unhappier creature under the sun than a fetishist who longs for a lady’s slipper and has to make do with a whole woman K.K.:F), 1991

 

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Idiot of the Family 4, 1996

 

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Pattern Is a Teacher, 2019

 

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Nobody will survive, 1984

 

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Without a Straw Hat, 2013

 

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Avalanche, 2008

 

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Taxi Driver, 2009

 

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Shutter, 2006

 

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Copy Me, 2013

 

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Ohne Titel, 2005

 

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Living Gold, 2005

 

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Untitled, 1992

 

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Meine Kindheit, 1997

 

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Demanding Person but a Sublime Poet, 2016

 

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Less Savages than Others, 2006

 

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Dream, 1989

 

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Long and Winding Road, 2002

 

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Alice in Wonderland, 1995

 

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Atheismus, 2007

 

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Prime-Age, 2012

 

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My dear colleagues, 1986

 

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Replace Me, 2011

 

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White Hope, 2021

 

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Untitled, 1997

 

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Untitled (Woolmark/Playboy Bunny), 1985

 

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Challenge, 2021

 

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No Past, 1997

 

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O. T. (Pompon), 1999

 

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Balaklava, 1986

 

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Untitled, 2000

 

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Untitled, 1987

 

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Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, 2014

 

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Untitled, 1997

 

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As the weird woman promised, 2005

 

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The Arm, 2009

 

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A Lady at her Toilet, 1991

 

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Divided We Laugh, 2006

 

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Imagine, aus Manus Spleen 2, 2002

 

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O. T, 2000

 

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Carrière Opportunity, 2012

 

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Living Money (Pierre Klossowski), 2005

 

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lives in Berlin, 2001

 

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Less Sauvage Than Others, 2007

 

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Albatros, 2019

 

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Tarzan, 2013

 

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Teeny a – i, 2022

 

 

*

p.s. Hey. ** Dominik, Hi!!! Pleasure. Editing goes very well. Still desperate for funds, but, otherwise, very good. I think we’ve finally gotten the ‘haunted house section’ almost right. That’s been the only really tricky part, and we’re starting to lay in the final score/music tracks. We have a screening for a big festival on the 20th, so we’ll need to have a new cut ready a few days before then. Oh, uh, I guess I was just thinking how nice it would be to be able to eat and digest anything. Maybe I had a cannibal moment, ha ha. High hopes that your mom gets a blind spot if she sees that photo album. Love comforting a filmmaker friend of mine who’d hoped that Matthew Perry would star in his next movie, G. ** _Black_Acrylic, Sure, man. Excellent about ‘The Good Boy’! How did it sit with the course? Really, so happy you’re in the groove again. Shit eating grin on my face. ** Charalampos, Hi. Oh, yeah I remember when my mom moved out of our family home and all the younger me stuff that suddenly reappeared and realising that I’d not had very good taste in my early days. I know people who sell CDs on that site discogs. When the film is finally ready to launch, we’ll need to set up an Instagram for it, so then if nothing else. Paris vibeage. ** Misanthrope, Work swamped here too. ‘Let them’, likely story. Corn maze! You must try to enjoy it enough for the both of us, okay? ** Steve Erickson, Thanks for the for the forewarning but, yeah, sounds worth it. For me, there’s a drop in the level of energy and wildness after ‘Mumbo Jumbo’ that makes the work less exciting to me. That said, I quite like ‘The Last Days of Louisiana Red’. And ‘The Terrible Twos’ as well. ** alex, I recently rediscovered what a fantastic song ‘Be True to Your School’ is. Jenkins is an excellent cat name, so true. Wow, nice. When I was a little kid, I had a pet rabbit named Mr. Bun. When I was an adolescent through early teen, I had a series of dogs, four, I think, all of whom died young and very tragically, and, after that, I wore off pets forever. Too painful. Yeah, I basically quit drugs because I had always used drugs mostly to try to, I don’t know, learn amazing things through the highs or to find transcendence or something, very influenced by Rimbaud, and there was a point where the highs just started to feel very same-y to me. Ecstasy was the last drug I really liked, and when it started getting polluted and weakened and stuff, I felt like I was done. I smoked pot as a teen, but then I had two huge LSD freak-outs, and I couldn’t smoke pot after that because it would trigger my bad trips. I liked it until then though. ** T, Hey! Cool, thanks. Everyone, T shares an interview with Ishmael Reed where he talks about his music, which is one of his less celebrated but definite talents. It’s here. Sunday’s good. Do you have my cell#? If so, we can sort a plan by text there, or else email me and we’ll do it that way. Great! ** Cody Goodnight, Hi, Cody. No apologies necessary, pal. My Halloween was a bust, but I knew that going into it, so no prob. Yes, ‘Freelance’ is a good start. I think ‘Mumbo Jumbo’ is the best start maybe. ‘Crash’ is an excellent novel. That period of Ballard’s fiction is really strong. ‘Duck Stab’, wow. I haven’t heard that in ages. Nice. I’m still just making stuff (film) and not seeing/hearing much. Oh, well. May your day salute you. ** SP, Thanks a lot! I really look forward to the listen and discovery. Really, thank you. Happy Friday. ** Audrey, Hi, Audrey. I’m going to try to find ‘Bottom’ during my editing break this weekend. Gosh, I love your post-marathon structure tinkering a lot. You sound like Zac and me with our film editing, but we still have time to get ours right. Puce Mary, real name Frederikke, gave us some amazing new tracks to use yesterday. Very exciting. I guess Pharmakon’s last one, ‘Devour’ is a good start. ‘Contact’ is very good too. I think Lana del Rabies’ new one, ‘A Plague’, is probably her best. Curious what you’ll think. Oh, no, I’m so sorry to hear about the depression spiral. If there’s something I can put on the blog to help you rise above, say the word. Seriously. I love a challenge. In the meantime, I’ll try to make my weird optimism as infectious to you as possible. Love, Dennis. ** Corey Heiferman, I’ll see what I can find in English of Yona Wollach. Curious. I think the need for obsessive attention to the film has temporarily diminished my natural tendency to obsess on random things. No BDSM social meeting soundtrack? Interesting. I guess I imagined really dark industrial music cloaking all of you in a grinding gloom. Shows you what I know. ** Travis (fka Cal), Hey, hey. New writing project, excellent. A library job sounds so cozy or something. Here’s hoping on your behalf. All I’m doing is finishing Zac’s and my new film. That’s basically been my entire life for the past year+, and we’re finally at end. But otherwise life is just series of little margins. But it’s all, or, well, mostly, good. ** Okay. I have given the great and very influential artist Rosemarie Trockel a show in my galerie today, and I propose that you wander about and gawk and that sort of thing. See you tomorrow.