Sin título (Untitled)

The work of Rosemarie Trockel revolves around the idea of a feminist art practice, and around a certain interest in aspects connected to the act of archiving. So in its elaboration it shows the contradiction between the form of production and the art hierarchies, or the concepts dividing art and craft. The influence of Joseph Beuys and Andy Warhol was important to the work of Rosemarie Trockel, an artist who, in the early 1980s, came into contact with the Mülheimer Freiheit group in Cologne with its ironic vision of painting. The artist took a passionately feminist approach to her work on Knitting Pictures, machine-knitted pieces of wool, framed according to computer-generated designs, which reproduce geometric motifs and recognisable logos. The knitted pictures are an ironic reference to the traditional division of work in industrial production and the roles to which women have been relegated in that context. In sculpture, Trockel has worked around the use of the object with a feminist, but also conceptual, signification. And Untitled belongs to this group. The work classifies objects, arranged on plinths or in vitrines, using anthropological analogies. Untitled is composed of a linen-covered metal structure on which is placed a blown glass figure, a jar and a lithograph plate showing the image of a bull, in an attempt to establish conceptual links between female sexuality, the environment and an ironic look at creative work.

Carmen Fernández Aparicio