Rosemary Trockel - Favorite Things

Rosemary Trockel’s 2008 exhibition at the Donald Young gallery is an encasing and display of remnants from people who have, for an unspecified but implied reason, left them behind. Entitled “Favorite Things”, she presents the viewer with framed collages, installations, and sculptures that are divided between two of the three gallery rooms, with two stray sculptures placed in the hallway.

The first room of the gallery contains a number of framed collages and two installation pieces. The space between each work is large enough so that each stands independently; each is a self-contained, isolated piece, successfully translating Trockel’s perception of it as representative of a singular person, concept, or thing. The only exception to this independence is the pair of installation pieces that occupy the floor of the room. I on my sofa, a piece whose placement gave me the impression that it was the first piece that I should look at, is an excessively geometric couch-like structure, on top of which is placed a framed collage much like the ones that hang on the walls surrounding it; this particular collage, however, depicts a face, albeit one composed of materials that in no way resemble a human face. I on my sofa calls attention to each piece’s reflection of a person, but more so, it provides a stark contrast to landscapian shroud of my mother, the other installation in the room. Although the base structure of landscapian closely resembles that of I on my sofa, it differs in its lack of upright planes. Rectangular portions of the surface protrude from the flat base with the exception of a rectangular area in the center of it, on top of which rests a black cloth. landscapian, even in the absense of the unnerving face that characterized I on my sofa, holds a larger sense of tragedy in it’s resemblance of a grave. Its gloomy and quiet atmosphere draws attention to the liveliness of the collages that line the walls around it.

The collages in this room consist principally of found objects, although one would not consider them simply “ready-mades”. Within each piece, which is displayed in a frame and under a sheet of glass, the found objects are combined with a variety of other substances to create the finished work. What the objects have in common is an origination from the home, or, indoor, familiar spaces that Trockel inadvertedly admits to being drawn towards. In an interview displayed at the gallery entrance, she reveals that she had “suffered from a case of agoraphobia that more or less defined [her] life[. It was a time during which she] could leave [her] apartment only with great effort” [1]. Her collages give the viewer the impression that their production grew out of first finding and choosing these found objects. Initially, the use of exclusively inherently domestic objects is a point of debate. The use of things found in the home gives her pieces a more craft-based process; they seem to have been made by someone putting together what they could find, much like one would do in making a scrapbook. Regardless of whether or not the person or connection is blatantly depicted in the piece, a ghost of these things is immediately detectable. On the other hand, if the viewer has knowledge of Trockel’s earlier bout with agoraphobia, the exclusively home-drawn objects cause him to wonder whether her condition crippled her in her artistic choices; Did she avoid choosing other objects intentionally, or because she herself was restricted to indoor, enclosed environments?

Another thought-provoking aspect of “Favorite Things” is Trockel’s decision to not only frame the collages contained in the first room, but also encase them with plexi-glass. Initially, her insistence on keeping these images restrained to a frame rather than displaying them as installations is a point of criticism, particularly on She is Dead 3; the actual presence of the objects would have given more of an impression of a previous human presence that was taken from the artist. If the actual abandoned clothes of She is Dead 3 were placed on an installed couch, they might have seemed more like memorials, tributes, or even gravestones. Being in the same vicinity as the possessions of someone who passed on would perhaps invoke greater feeling in the viewer. The fact that they are constrained to the frame and a canvas carries certain implications of a “window” in the art community, whereas installations, with their penetration into a real-world environment, connect more aptly with the viewer by defying the expectation for them to be illusionary. However, the frame/plexiglass makes the viewer feel so far removed from their contained objects that he quickly realizes that such a dissonance-heavy choice was intentional. As one looks at the pieces, he is occupied only with Trockel’s connection with the people to whom she is paying tribute. It causes curiosity, and at first, alienation and frustration; unless he had the opportunity to speak to Trockel personally and she was completely open about her work, the intimacy contained in the collages remains a vague, blurred object. The viewer can sense that this “vague, blurred object” has intricacies, an outline, details, but all of these remain elusive to anyone but Trockel.

At the end of the hallway that leads to the entrance of the second room of the exhibition are two pieces: Dessert 1 and Pot. Although an observer could think of many significantly different ideas in comparing these two, what remains constant among them is a theme of deception. Firstly, each is titled in such a way that causes the viewer to think critically about them. With its desert-like color scheme, the similarity of the title of Dessert 1 to the word “desert” causes the viewer to investigate the title in more depth. The piece is a glob of shiny ceramic material that appears to be exploding away from a flat, circular imprint in the center of it. Pot the piece that rests on the ground before it, is a glob of the same material that surrounds the flat portion of Dessert 1. The two works are spaced in a way that implies that the material of Pot was once a part of Dessert 1, and that whatever made the imprint on Dessert 1 caused the material of Pot to fall away from it.

Together, these two sculptures set up both the visual and the conceptual transition present in proceeding from the first room of the gallery to the second room. This room contains a series of sculptures, two of which appear to mimic Dessert 1; these are accordingly entitled Dessert 2 and Dessert 3. Both sculptures, hung on the wall at eye level, repeat the thought process introduced by Dessert 1; the imprint on each piece acts as an index, indicating that something caused its uncharacteristic presence on the naturally erratic, landscape-like surface of the material. Each ones placement at a general eye-level draws the viewer to look at the flattened, reflective surface in the center, only to find that he is again faced with a blurred image. However, in the case of these sculptures, the image presented is simply a blurred reflection of the viewer rather than a mental image of what preceded the creation of the collages in the first room. Trockel successfully shows her Dessert sculptures as manifestations of the aftermath that follows losing a loved one both through the imprint on the piece reflecting the emotional imprint caused by this experience, and also through the blurry reflective surface of the imprint mirroring the process of introspection and self-evaluation involved in it.

The other three pieces in the second room separate themselves slightly from the dessert pieces. While the dessert sculptures are hung on the left wall, less savage than others, dream tank, and kiss my aura are randomly spaced on the floor-space, less savage being the only one that touches the wall across from them. Each piece has a presence unlike those in Trockel’s collages; they represent the feelings one experiences as he goes through a loss, and are a part of the reflections he sees in the dessert sculptures. Dream tank consists of an opaque cup resting on top of a flimsy box-shaped surface. The instability of the surface under the cup connotes deterioration and abandonment. Although the placement of the cup on a table rather than in a sink implies that it would be filled, it is empty. Both the cup and box appear to be left-behind by someone who has no intention of returning them. In dream tank, Trockel expresses the actual feelings of crushed expectancy associated with losing a previously frequently present part of one’s life. Kiss my aura, placed directly in the implied path from dream tank to less savage than others, gives the viewer a feeling that an invisible barrier exists around the statue, and there is a level of hesitance in approaching it too closely. The final piece of the exhibition, less savage then others, holds themes that resemble those of dream tank; the piece, consisting of a table holding a mannequin head that is wrapped in an unfinished handcrafted hat, also implies unintentional abandonment.

The entirety of Rosemary Trockel’s “Favorite Things” exhibition conveys the tragedy of losing a loved one through the personal items left behind. She highlights the clothing and items that once belonged to the person as a trigger of his memory; the proof or remnants of his existence are the only thing left, and he is simply a ghost that haunts them. This use of remnants in conjunction with the lack of specificity in Trockel’s pieces shows that the trials in the aftermath of such a loss are universal, while at the same time remaining complex and personal.

[1] http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0268/is_7_41/ai_98918662/print

*jep205

Quote and Comments.

"A man with no art background can be just as moved by Picasso’s Old Guitarist as a professor of art theory who has been immersed in the art world for years. While the man with no background may not be capable of expressing his connection to the painting, his unarticulated opinion is just as valid as the opinion of the professor.

Somewhere, people lost sight of that." - Delineate, Rachel Aherin

(comments made to Rachel Aherin, Rachel Bergman, and Hannah Dean)

Four Master Tropes

Irony/Dialectic : Keith Obadike's "Blackness for Sale"  (http://obadike.tripod.com/ebay.html)

\

Synecdoche/Reduction : Stephen Charlton's "Three Sails"

Metonymy/Reduction: Michelangelo Buonarroti's "Mary Magdalen Contemplating the Crown of Thorns"

Metaphor/Perspective : Georgia O'Keeffe's "Ram's Head White Hollyhock and Little Hills"

Elevation

Elevation Magazine

Format: Elevation will be a 150 page quarterly magazine based in New York City, but covering material from all areas of the United States.

Distribution: Elevation will be sold at all popular newsstands. There will also be a homepage containing previews of the issue and special offers on subscriptions.

Departments:
Advertising – Advertisements for the magazine will range anywhere from high-fashion clothing to up and coming music venues to sports tournaments.

Interviews – Elevation will interview various icons of popular culture, including young artists, celebrities, musicians, writers, and more.

Critical Essays: Each issue will include essays done by well-established art critics that focus on various aspects of culture. Contributors will be asked to focus on dissecting and analyzing pop culture in an artistic context and relate it to various fields.

Fan-fare: Readers will have until the 15th of every third month to mail in works of their own. Works can be anything from critical essays to works of art to a website containing music samples.

Art: Only exhibits and galleries through which some level of connection to pop-culture can be drawn will be highlighted in Elevation, but the magazine will contain advertisements of a wide range of other exhibits.

Contributors
Takashi Murakami, a contemporary Japanese artist known for blurring high and low art in a style he has dubbed “superflat”.

Clement Greenberg, an American critic closely associated with modern art in the United States.

Grace Mirabella, former Vogue editor for 17 years. Currently on staff as artistic director.

Ryan Schreiber, founder and owner of Pitchfork Media, a popular online music review website.

Annie Liebovitz, a highly-reverred American portrait photographer closely associated with Rolling Stone and Vanity Fair.





Editors Note

To present you with Elevation, I will begin my first editors note by admitting something that is probably considered shameful in the art community: upon my first confrontation with Edouard Manet’s “Olympia”, an undeniable staple of any art enthusiasts education and background, I tilted my head in confusion and inquired as to what the “big deal” was about the painting. “Everything is so flat,” I thought, “and he didn’t even bother trying to hide the outlines around the figures.” What I lacked was the historical context surrounding the work; I had no idea that Manet painted the piece in such a way intentionally in order to comment on traditional ideas and processes of painting that had been upheld for hundreds of years. Although I can now look back fondly at my naiveté, I cringe when I remember that my mistaken thinking was in no way unique; most people who are not familiar with the art community, but are still curious about it, harbor the same misconceptions. I have watched far too many infatuations with art wane and eventually extinguish at the realization that there are legions of well-versed art historians who will always have a “greater”, seemingly unapproachable knowledge, and thus appreciation, of art. I can’t blame them for letting their interest fade. Most of their attempts at art appreciation is focused on institutionalized, century-old pieces that require an extensive understanding of art history and context; they are, as most thing in what is considered “high art”, inaccessible. By recontextualizing “low culture” in this magazine, I hope to revive a generation’s infatuation with artistic culture and nurture it into a passionate, lifelong commitment.

Elevation will provide an in-depth analysis of what traditionally goes overlooked in modern life; that is, in the tradition of artists such as Andy Warhol and David Hockey, it will spotlight aspects of what is considered “frivolous” pop culture, employing the same critical thought used in the observance of highly revered objects of art history. Far too many times I have found myself in a post-lecture conversation with someone who deems close analytical reading of a historically significant text pointless, reasoning that what critics had interpreted from the text could not have possibly been what the author intended; many great minds have been lost to that sort of thinking. In its publishing interpretations and critical opinions of exclusively popular culture, a topic that lacks a definite source or “intentions”, Elevation will raise topics that many feel deserve closer and more deliberate thought to a status previously reserved only for institutionally praised works of art.

Within each issues, well-known authors, critics, and icons will contribute writings that pertain to topics of popular culture. Cultural posts such as fashion, music, style trends, customs, language, and landmarks will be closely analyzed both visually and objectively. Also included in each issue will be interviews with people that the staff of Elevation feel best represent the ideals and hopes of the culture of the current young generation (ages 18-24). In addition to this, user-generated content will be accepted and integrated into the magazines, the contribution of which will be made possible by tri-monthly deadlines for the readers themselves. Through the combination of these vital components of the magazine, I hope to create a forum in which young adults who believe that there is merit in studying what is normally written off as entertainment can express and share their theories.