Spleen. For this exhibition, Trockel will install a new suite of video projections connected by cantilevered aluminum walls that are suffused with warm ambient light.
Spleen
For this exhibition, Trockel will install a new suite of video
projections connected by cantilevered aluminum walls that are suffused
with warm ambient light.
In this installation, Trockel's continuing
interested in the multifarious meanings of "spleen" is filtered through
the feminist perspective at the heart of her practice.
"Spleen," the first major exhibition in the United States of
work by German artist Rosemarie Trockel, opens at Dia Center for
the Arts on October 17, with a reception on Wednesday, October
16, from 6 to 8 pm.
For "Spleen," Trockel will create a new installation comprising
a suite of videos projected onto cantilevered walls. The
sculptural walls, made of plates of aluminum, will both
consolidate and delineate viewing areas in Dia's
7,000-square-foot gallery. The videos will include, among
others, "Manu's Spleen I" (2000), in which the employment of
simple shots and real-time recording produces a calm, measured
scene of an open grave, layering memory, reality, and fantasy to
contemplate issues of human intimacy; and the short video
"Manu's Spleen III" (2001), a dynamic and surreal scene of
several women-one falsely pregnant-laughing together at a party,
which alludes to the theme of hysteria. By creating unfamiliar
characters with uncertain intentions, Trockel draws on a
constellation of emotions to provoke, sometimes humorously,
unsettling questions about generally held notions of identity.
Central to Trockel's work is a feminist viewpoint that has
proven singular and sustained, flexible and pithy, when employed
as a tool for cultural analysis. Through drawing, sculptural
knitted works, painting, and textiles, in addition to her
extensive work in video and installation, Trockel has explored
social convention and stereotyping as vehicles for disguise.
Many of her knitted works blend the worlds of politics and
decoration, or machine work and handicraft, to recontextualize
the meanings of the objects she creates and to rethink the
boundaries of such categories.
Rosemarie Trockel
Born in 1952, Trockel lives and works in Cologne, Germany, and
has internationally exhibited her work since the 1980s.
Trockel's recent solo exhibitions include the Moderna Museet in
Stockholm (2001); exhibitions of drawings at Centre Georges
Pompidou, Paris, and The Drawing Center, New York City, in 2001;
De Pont Foundation for Contemporary Art, Tilburg, Netherlands
(1999); Musée d'art moderne de la ville de Paris (1999);
Whitechapel Art Gallery, London (1998); and Kunsthalle Hamburg,
Germany (1998). Trockel represented Germany at the 1999 Venice
Biennale.
Lecture
Scholar Rebecca Comay will lecture on Trockel's art this fall as
part of Dia's Robert Lehman Lectures on Contemporary Art. The
lecture will take place at Dia's exhibition facility at 548 West
22nd Street on Thursday, December 12, 2002, at 6:30 pm. For more
information the public may call Dia at 212 989 5566.
Exhibition Support
Support for this exhibition has been provided by The Andy Warhol
Foundation for the Visual Arts, Ake Skeppner, and the members of
the Dia Art Council.
Dia
Dia Art Foundation was founded in 1974. The nonprofit Dia plays
a vital role among visual arts institutions nationally and
internationally by initiating, supporting, presenting, and
preserving art projects, and by serving as a primary locus for
interdisciplinary art and criticism. In addition to presenting
exhibitions and public programming at Dia Center for the Arts in
Chelsea, Dia maintains long-term, site-specific projects in the
western United States, in New York City, and on Long Island. In
May 2003, Dia will open Dia:Beacon, a new museum in Beacon, New
York, to house its renowned collection of American and European
art of the 1960s and 1970s.
"Spleen" runs through June 15, 2003.
Exhibition hours during the 2002-2003 season are Wednesday
through Sunday, 12 noon to 6 pm. Admission is $6 ($3 for
students and seniors and free to Dia members).
Dia Center for the Arts
548 West 22nd Street (between 10th and 11th avenues), New York City
http://www.diaart.org