FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Donald Young Gallery is pleased to present an exhibition of new work by German artist Rosemarie Trockel.

Using narrative and conceptual devices, Trockel’s new body of work considers, both visually and semantically, such complex topics as the existentialist dilemma, the death of a past life, the objectified female nude, and memories of days gone by. This solo exhibition centers on a series of collages composed as direct expressions of fleeting thoughts and constructed of diverse materials like photographs, clippings, paint, and cloth. Harnessing a strategy ideologically designated as “feminine”, Trockel does what other artists are often hesitant to do: she unflinchingly evokes a very personal narrative, with explicit titles such as Blood Enrichment, Something of Tomorrow, and She is Dead.

While the collages have recourse to Trockel’s early watercolors and drawings, her new sculptural works are more materially experimental. Exhibited among the collage series in the main gallery, I on my sofa refers to the artist’s process of making. When Trockel began to create the collages, she propped them up on her sofa at home as a type of easel. Later when she started experimenting with ceramics, she built her own platform sofa as a means of support. Similarly, the cast bronze box, dream tank, was formed directly from a cardboard box, and relates to Trockel’s drawing methods. When working, she requires a sense of being enclosed, as if in a box, in her own personal space. The heaviness of the bronze gives a disconcerting sense of stability and permanence to an object that usually is only a temporary enclosure.

At first glance, Trockel’s Dessert wall sculptures seem to have the representational indicators of a wall-mirror, with the central, flat circular panel glazed in platinum. However, the sculpted center is not clear enough to provide a true reflection, and instead produces a brilliant, displaced luminosity that is less about reflection and more about the hand-worked mass of clay. The tactile ceramic formations around the sides project out, giving life and expression to the piece.

Born in 1952 in Schwerte, Germany, Rosemarie Trockel studied painting with Werner Schriefers at the Werkkunstschule in Cologne from 1974 to 1978. She has exhibited widely in Europe and North America and was included in such major shows as the Venice Biennial (1999, 1996), Istanbul Biennial (1999, 1995), and Documenta X (with Carsten Höller, 1997). Recent one-person exhibitions were presented at Dia, New York (2004), Sammlung Goetz, Munich (2002), Moderna Museet, Stockholm (2001). She lives and works in Cologne.

If you would like more information, please contact Emily Letourneau or Tiffany Tummala at 312.455.0100.