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16/2/2012

Rosemarie Trockel

Wiels - Contemporary Art Center, Bruxelles

curator Dirk Snauwaert
The exhibition Flagrant Delight provides a first general overview of the work of German artist Rosemarie Trockel, who is considered to be one of the major artists of her generation, in Belgium. Through a very personal and subjective approach to avantgarde themes, she proposed an alternative to rigid formalism and expressive painting at the beginning of the 1980s, and thus laid the foundations for what became postmodernism.
Today, a few decades later, the fundamental principles of her practice and work still involve the notions of liberty and going beyond the limits of academicism, conventional associations and knowledge of language, as well as avant-garde forms and symbols. Trockel’s particular attitude, whereby she clearly refers to the subjective heritage of dadaism and surrealism, allows a special context to be created for an exhibit in Belgium and in Brussels. And yet, her work has been exhibited here very rarely.

This exhibition presents more than one hundred works – ensembles of wool paintings, repetitive ‘cooking plates’, visceral ceramics, foam sculptures and expressive collages – and attempts to provide an overview of Trockel’s approach, based on works and series from the 1980s to the present, as well as others which have been made specially for this occasion. The themes are as varied as her techniques. All of this content is formulated from a precise, poetic and explicitly female perspective.

This exhibition will provide comprehensive insight into her oeuvre and will features works and groups of works produced from the early 1980s onwards and works created specifically for the exhibition. The title is a reference to the dual or multiple qualities of her work: expressive, playful, funny, sombre, obscure and always sensuous.

Rosemarie Trockel has been producing her stylistically heterogeneous works in a wide range of media since the 1970s. Her oeuvre, which has assumed an important and unique position at international level and encompasses drawings, two and three- dimensional picture and material collages, objects, installations, “knitting pictures”, ceramics, videos, furniture, pieces of clothing, and books, cannot be reduced to a single artistic genre or style; its common denominator is the intensity of its content, which incorporates an equally wide-ranging network of associations and discourses, and extends from the premises of western philosophical, theological and scientific debate and various role models and symbols to the standards and canonical manifestations of art. All of this content is formulated from a precise and explicitly female perspective.

Rosemarie Trockel’s “female” perspective extends beyond a feminist gesture. Her works are the expressions of an author who – starting with the coding of her own individuation – distances herself from systems that impose both social and sexual identity and gender- related constraints. This is repeatedly expressed in works concerning the polar opposites of the conscious and unconscious and the culturally formed and unformed, including, for example, the numerous works she has created with and about animals: i.e. the series of animal films produced between 1978 and 1990, the models and houses developed for various animal species since the late 1980s.

The artist
Born in Schwerte, Westphalia in 1952, Rosemarie Trockel grew up in a rural area of Leverkusen-Opladen. In 1971 she began to study to become a teacher at the Pädagogische Hochschule Köln with majors in anthropology, sociology, theology, and mathematics. In 1974 she switched to the Kölner Werkkunstschule and studied under the painter Werner Schriefers until 1978. In 1980, she became friends with ubaniste and later gallerist Monika Sprüth, with whom she traveled to the United States, where she made decisive acquaintances with conceptual artists Jenny Holzer, Barbara Kruger and Cindy Sherman. Trockel's practice covers both paintings, drawings, sculptures, video, objects, installations and actions. In 1982, she had her first solo exhibitions in Cologne and Bonn.
The year 1988 was an important one: Trockel had her first exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, and she took part in the acclaimed exhibition "Made in Cologne". At documenta X in Kassel in 1997, Trockel built together with Carsten Höller Ein Haus für Schweine und Menschen (a house for pigs and people) and let the audience watch the animalistic art of life. Meanwhile professor at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf, she exhibited at Leopold-Hoesch-Museum in Düren in 1998. In 1999 Rosemarie Trockel was the first woman to exhibit at the German pavilion in Venice, where she showed three films in three different halls. In her biennale contribution she addressed the past of childhood with cars she designed herself for children. Her work has been included worldwide in exhibitions, Bienniales and collections.
The artist lives and works in Cologne. She is a member of the Akademie der Künste in Berlin since 1995 and professor at the Düsseldorf Art Academy since 1998.

The exhibition will be accompanied by a major publication that will be published in collaboration with the Kunsthalle Zürich, Museion Bolzano / Bozen and Culturgest, Lissabon.

With the support of Institut für Auslandsbeziehungen e.v.
In collaboration with Museion Bolzano / Bozen and Culturgest Lissabon

Complementary Programme
28.03.2012: Lecture by Corinne Diserens (EN)
04.04.2012: Introduction and guided tour by curator Dirk Snauwaert (NL)
25.04.2012: Introduction and guided tour by curator Dirk Snauwaert (FR)

Image: Nobody will Survive I, 2008. Mixed Media, 68 x 58 x 4,8 cm. Edition unique, collection Per Skarstedt, NYC, USA. Image courtesy Sprüth Magers Berlin London

Press contact:
Micha Pycke M +32 (0)486 680070 T +32 (0)2 3400051 micha.pycke@wiels.org

Press Conference: Thursday 16 February 2012 at 11am In presence of the curator Dirk Snauwaert and the artist Rosemarie Trockel
Vernissage Friday 17th of February

Wiels - Contemporary Art Center
Avenue Van volxem, 354 - Brussels
Hours: Wednesday through Sunday: 11:00 – 18:00
Nocturnes until 21.00 every 1st and 3rd Wednesdays of the month
Closed on Mondays and Tuesdays
Admission: Individual visitor : 7€
Students(+18), teachers, seniors (+60), groups (> 10 pers): 5€
Students (12-18), schoolgroups and unemployed : 3€

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