PARASOPHIA 京都国際現代芸術祭2015

Rosemarie Trockel
b. 1952 in Schwerte, Germany; based in Cologne

Works in exhibition
Camouflage, 2006
Wool (gray-beige), wood
He Juxing Art Foundation Collection

Square Enemy, 2006
Wool (brown-olive), wood
Private collection

Lumber, 2007
Wool (hazelnut), wood
He Juxing Art Foundation Collection

See all installation views at higher resolution: www.flickr.com/photos/parasophia/sets/72157656871750571

Professor at Kunstakademie Düsseldorf since 1998. Roswitha Haftmann prize, 2014. Rosemarie Trockel studied at the Werkkunstschule art academy in Cologne. She has worked extensively in a wide range of media including art objects made of ceramic and bronze, photo collage, video montage, and drawing on the body. In the late 1980s, Trockel had gained international prominence for machine-knitted wool “paintings” that appropriated and made repeated patterns out of existing logos and trademarks, and since the 1990s, she has been featured in numerous exhibitions, primarily in Europe and the United States, and has consistently been recognized as one of the leading female contemporary artists. In 1999, Trockel became the first female artist to represent Germany at the Venice Biennale. Deriving inspiration from fields such as natural history, zoology, botany, and mineralogy, she has emphasized both aesthetic expression and the processes that go into its realization. In A Cosmos, an exhibition that toured Spain, the United States, and Great Britain in 2012–13, Trockel drew viewers into her unique worldview with works that intentionally showed the internalized influences of works by other artists that have inspired her.
At Parasophia: Kyoto International Festival of Contemporary Culture 2015, she will exhibit three from her signature series of knitted paintings, begun early in her career. These works look from a distance like monochromatic painted canvases, but on closer examination reveal countless nubs of garter-stitched wool. Woven into the paintings, created from a single strand of yarn, are Trockel’s own thoughts and feelings towards the history lying beneath our current era of mechanical weaving, and the stories of the people that made it possible.

• Kyoto Municipal Museum of Art