Monika Sprüth and Philomene Magers are pleased to present an exhibition of new wool pictures and wall sculptures by Rosemarie Trockel. The artist had her first show with Monika Sprüth in 1983, in Cologne, where she still lives and works.

Rosemarie Trockel has always used a diverse range of genres and media in her work, from sculpture and drawing to collage, photography, video, and installation. She also uses a variety of materials, not least wool, with all its socially charged meanings. Her deep engagement and experiments with wool over many years have allowed Trockel to attain great freedom in her handling of the medium.

In the most recent works in wool, the material is placed like a stroke of the brush on the canvas, initiating a subtle examination of twentieth-century abstract painting. The exhibition features black monochrome pictures placed among others with vibrantly coloured stripes, creating a shifting set of colour relationships that constantly renew themselves as the viewer moves through the gallery.

A similar approach is evident in her handling of ceramic and ceramic-like material such as Acrystal, which she combines with Plexiglas in her recent sculptures. She applies casts of different cuts of meat to transparent, curved carrier panels, wittily referring to stylistic innovations of twentieth-century art yet also dislodging the material from their conventional connotations or meanings. The titles, such as “Rubbersoul” or “Marble doesn’t smile”, as well as her selective use of colour and its painterly application on unlikely surfaces, further highlight her humorous handling of paint and materials. As Roberta Smith shrewdly writes, Trockel is 'a subversive anti-painting painter and a dedicated, non-ideological feminist.'

Rosemarie Trockel (1952) is included in “Il Palazzo Enciclopedico”, 55th Venice Biennial where in 1999 she presented her work at the German Pavilion. Parallel to the exhibition “A Cosmos” in Madrid, New York, and London (2012-2013), a solo exhibition, “Flagrant Delight”, was presented at Wiels, Brussels, Culturegest, Lisbon, and the Museion Bozen. Other recent solo exhibitions include Kunstbau im Lenbachhaus, München (2002), “Post-Menopause”, Museum Ludwig, Cologne (2005) as well as MAXXI, Rome (2005), “Deliquescence of the Mother”, Kunsthalle Zürich (2010), as well as an exhibition of drawings, collages, and book designs that travelled to the Kunstmuseum Basel, the Talbot Rice Gallery, Edinburgh, and the Kunstmuseum Bonn (2010-2011).

All images Courtesy of Sprüth Magers Berlin, London, Photography by Stephen White.

Sprüth Magers Gallery
7A Grafton Street
London W1S 4EJ United Kingdom
Ph. +44 (0)20 74081613
info@spruethmagers.com
www.spruethmagers.com

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