Rosemarie Trockel - Biography

Her knit pieces from the 1980s made her famous – Rosmarie Trockel deals with preconceived stereotypes about men and women and illustrated them ironically and parodisticly. Wool as a material has a negative association and is typically connected with prototypically female labour. She also uses eggs or hobs – you need a “good housewife” and her love and skill to make something out of that. Rosemarie Trockel critically analyses questions of gender roles, she deals with the position of women in society and art without giving the opportunity to pigeonhole her as a feminist or society critic.

“She decides the absurd symbiosis of her pictures and objects on-site, she creates a humoristic staging, integrating every single object into a complex net of anthropological, cultural, philosophical and political questions.”

Her entire oeuvre cannot be categorized, it does not fit into the boundaries of a single genre. The artist also uses more than one medium for her art. Her repertoire reaches from drawings, two- and three-dimensional picture and material collages, ceramics and videos to furniture, clothing and books. In her exhibitions the artist spontaneously combines old and new pieces as well as objets trouvés, this approach is part of her art. She decides the absurd symbiosis of her pictures and objects on-site, she creates a humoristic staging, integrating every single object into a complex net of anthropological, cultural, philosophical and political questions.

 

Rosemarie Trockel was was born in 1952 in Schwerte and lives in Cologne. She studied painting at the Kölner Werkschulen from 1974 till 1978.

Rosemarie Trockel - art exhibitions

Her first big solo-exhibition in the gallery Monika Sprüth in 1983 helped her become famous. The contribution “Ein Haus für Schweine und Menschen” (“a house for pigs and people”) she made together with Carsten Höller for the Documenta X in 1997 caused quite a stir. She was the first woman to represent the german pavilion at the Biennale in Venice in 1999. She received the Goslarer Kaiserring prize and the Wold-prize in 2011. Rosmarie Trockel has been teaching at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf since 1998.

 

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