LOOKI"NG BACK TO GO FORWARD WITH ROSEMARIE TROCKEL BY FIONN MEADE
THE COSMOLOGY OF GERMAN ARTIST Rosemarie Trockel is a constHntly shifting inventory, substituting iconographic, linguistic, a nd material transformations ff) !' the expected guises of identity and representation. Advertorial images a nd pop figures exist alongside typologies and culled from history, the natural sciences, cinema, anlhl·opology, and the artist's own hybrid indpx of drawings, collages, a.nd moving imnges. And yet to Walt Whitman's biological envisioning of self a nd world, '· 1 am large, I conta in multitudes," 1'rockel's incisive productivity might offer Emily Dickinson's rejoinder on creativity: "Don't you know that · No' is the wildest word we consign to language'!" As "Rosemarie Trockel: A Cos mos" opens at the Museo Centro de Arte Reina
·ms ARTINFD.COM UI Vfl9E x '11: 90 'o lpaw pexlV'J ILO?: '/a/l1 eUljO Sofia in Madrid this summer- it will analog for the la rger practice: l\1lanu is a invests in a nd mocks her own obsessions- travel to the New Museum this fall, where proxy activist protesting the proposed most ohviously in the risible co nfl ation of it will be her fi rst New York museu m demolition of the Cologne Kunstverein a nd BB from Bertolt Breeht Hnd Brigitte Bardot exhibition in a decade- h er last institu- Kunsthalle; Manu is a wealthy young (a hybrid reference that reappears else- tional Ol how in New York conti nues to woman ra ising a toast to her own pregnan- where in Trockel's repertoire). Eluborated reverberate and give insight into an cy, only to pop the bnlloon beneath her from Itali a n literary critic Fra nco Forti ni's indelible approach to exhibit.ion making, dress to riotous laughter; and Manu is a use of the same term to describe Pasolini's for Tl'ockel repeatedly finds abunda nee gag performeJ' holding (:l written placard writings a nd films, there is a constant in the wilderness of no. "Spleen ," present- up to a n elepha nt asking the whel'eabouts "being beside itself' to TTockel's work that ed in 2002 by the Dia Art of a Mr. Comes. Each Manu is resolutely goes to the metaphysical heart of parody. in their former Chelsea venue (and orga- pa r tia l, reacting to the fragility of the Prying apart a nd emptying out stylistic nized by then cu.rator Lynne Cooke. a lso exhibition's swaying, responsive architec- investments, critical prompts, and theoreti- the co-curator of "A Cosmos"), followed ture. Any cathartic n)lease the spectator cal lines of inquiry in order that they be the character Manu through it series of might desire from Manu-the spleen is revita lized wi th a restless co mic gravitas, fi ve episodic videos pr'ojected onto i;cparate traditionally held to thc seat of emotions Trockel's is a rguahly t he "para" practice freesta nd ing sculptural wall i> . A provi- a nd passion-is dispersed. This split par excellence of our time. As she offers in sional muse, lVl a nu and her confines nature of nal'l'ative, self, and fi gurative a rare interview with Cooke published to nre a fitting cipher for stepping further form culminates in Spleen 4, 2002, accompa ny "Spleen ," "the question of the into Tmckel's unique fashioning [rom in which Trockel pa rodies the i.nfa rnous model in terms of what engagement could out of negation. mean t.h es e cl ays is contraciictory and On the reverse of each partition were a mbiguous. rt is a lso a ffected by our points hinged aluminum' plates of bl ack, oran ge, of view. Models arc a matter of one's own yellow, silver, and white that were fl exihle ROCKEL work. There is no model for how to deal enough to respond to the movement of with a model. i" never on firm ground." passing viewers. Providing a contour of I neleed, Troc kel has been giving shape hypersensitive vulnerability mixed with REFUSES to this line of and interro- Mini ma1ist cool (and a distant nod to gation throughout bel' tareer via formal. Blinky Palermo's painting insta llation I b l OBE material- a nd mediu.m- specific pa rtial the People vf New York City, 1977, in Dia's investments. To briefly outline the etymol- collection), the walls' paradoxically hard ogy of parody as it relates here, parodias fragility bulwarked the looping videos PERIODIZED were once inserted in between the rhapi;ody a nd a llimated a. ten::; ion between precise or reeitation of Greek drama. Performers architectura l framing a_nd a parodic would enter to ridicule and quickly relationship to narrative, figure, a nd genre N overtum a ll that came before. Speaking central to "Spleen" fin d Trockel's oeuvre. beside the co nventional taxt, serious parody Tall and beautiful, Manu is eelsy to liHEREBY therefore h as its descenda nts in the recall, walking noncha lantly through a entr'acte and intermezzo of theater and graveY