Rosemarie Trockel

Tramway presents a major retrospective of the work of Rosemarie Trockel, one of Germany’s highest profile contemporary artists. Rosemarie Trockel’s career over the last twenty years is illustrated in this, the only UK date for the exhibition. The show profiles the artist as intriguing, witty and diverse. Trockel is an artist who uses a wide range of materials and media, from painting and drawing to video, as the work demands. The work is deceptively simple, using humour and irony to explore nevertheless complicated issues such as gender stereotypes and the pursuit of the original in art. By using everyday props and processes, such as her hotplate reliefs, she elevates ordinary objects associated with females to the status of art objects, which then demand the same appreciation as others created in a male dominated art system. Trockel’s painting machine (1990) produces large abstract works painted with brushes, which use the hair of prominent contemporary artists, including Sigmar Polke, Georg Baselitz and Barbara Kruger. This mechanical process sits beside the many drawings which, as works in themselves, are an integral part of the artist’s working process. With her knitted paintings of the 1990s, Rosemarie Trockel used a traditionally female craft technique and material, to comment both on the creation of original work and her position as a female artist in a male dominated area. Patterns are designed on computer, knitted by a painting machine then mounted on canvas, promoting them to the status of minimalist sculpture. Born in 1952, Rosemarie Trockel lives and works in Cologne. Her works have been shown in major galleries in Europe, Australia and the U.S. Annika Plank, exhibitions officer at the Institute of Foreign Affairs, Stuttgart, will give a talk on Rosemarie Trockel’s work on Friday, 24 September 2004. Pressetext

Rosemarie Trockel
Tramway 2