Trockel pulls out all the stops in engaging the viewer in Favorite Things, now on display at the Donald Young Gallery. The German artist continues to develop her familiar themes, this time in a quiet, melancholic expression.

Immediately what draws a viewer into the larger room are the two eerie, seemingly floating minimalist sculptures, which resemble high-end furniture. The sculptures create a more dynamic space, and play into more themes of loss. Any meaning by the literal forms is negated by their stark nature, and by using the minimalist sculpture Trockel distances herself from the experience of the viewer. Viewers move through the space, their experience determined by ambient conditions, and the art becomes relative to the viewers' vision. Trockel willingly looses some control over the meaning, or at least the physical view, of her work, owing much to Roland Barthes theory on the loss of authorial agency.

Trockel's show is undoubtedly feminine, but a masculine feminine; a Katharine Hepburn of an art show. All the obvious symbols are there: fabric, fashion, boobs, the drippy, paint-stained wood backgrounds to the wall pieces, reminiscent of Helen Frankenthaler. The plexiglass covers that enclose the wall pieces give the impression of storefront windows or showcases, bringing the material inside down from high art status to decoration or handicraft and further feminizing the work.

The feminine motifs in the wall works and minimalist sculpture command a certain to-be-looked-at-ness, even though only three wall works contain images of women. Still, though, the indices of femininity command some attention and feelings of reverence or some attachment. The piece of bed sheet in Night Origami, sink-like form of avalanche, and conservative, easy clothing in several wall works all emit a familiar, motherly ambiance. This feeling from the series of wall works to set the tone for the minimalist sculpture.

Parts of the series of wall works that do not contain explicitly feminine objects or images still try to have a strong psychological effect on the viewer. Instead of evoking memory, some wall pieces simply draw in the viewer with aural spectacle. Nobody will Survive 2 stares back with a synthetic eye, presented theatrically with silver curtain-like strips and a tactile terry cloth strip that doubles as a full bottomed wig. The Dessert series invites viewers to gaze into their crackled, disjoined centers, which amount to vanity mirrors. Surrounded by rugged, coarse ceramic, the built-out edges of the mirrors come off like fool's gold, framing the nebulous reflection of the viewer in the center.

The women’s wear featured in the wall works reads masculine. It owes much to menswear as separates, and the clothing looks like it is made out of synthetic materials. Flat shoes and loose-fitting velvet pants look like they’re made for day wear, ease and comfort, not typical feminine fashion. As in previous work, the possibility of collapsing the masculine and feminine reappears with the nearly gender-neutral clothing

. Only one piece of clothing really breaks with this theme: the one white dress pictured in She is Dead 4. The dress, though, looks like a traditional garment, an allusion to a wedding dress. The images of clothing all end up as indices of a lived life, of the elderly. The best example of this, then, is the shaw, which lays on the bed-like sculpture. The shaw is not only an ominous black cloth lying on the stark white bed, but also a symbol of ethnic fashion and tradition in deathly jet black, set against the literal, empty sculpture's form.

But the relationship in the wall work between these photographs and their backdrop again addresses the confrontation of masculine and feminine. These indices of elderly women are aggressively stapled onto painted wood, stroked arbitrarily with color. The juxtaposition of a vacant female form with the masculine brushstroke polarizes the genders—one aggressive and artistic, the other passive and rooted in handicraft. Both, though, are locked within the framed edges of the collage and caged in behind plexiglass, confusingly shut off from the real world.

Finally all of these images of clothing relate to Joseph Beuys, whose influence is evident in her use of industrial machinery in the knitted work

. The evacuated blouses, pants, and shoes evoke Beuys's Felt Suit (1970). The images of laid-out clothing turn into indices of indices—the clothing is more than a kind of self-portrait, as Beuys designated his work. Laid out on couches and tables the clothing is a trace of a body, a melancholy reminder of something that has withered away or dematerialized. But their presence is still felt, because, like Felt Suit, the pieces of clothing, especially the knit sweater and velvet drawstring pants, evoke thoughts of warmth.

Despite the feelings of warmth, though, Favorite Things still leaves the viewer cold. This is illustrated by the trickery of the materials in avalanche and dream tank, a grey box accessorized with a ceramic cup. Both have the appearance of cardboard—a depressed, dilapidated material painted, in the case of dream tank, or smeared with clay and enameled in the case of avalanche. Their tattered, disjoined form contributes to the melancholy but poetic mood of the show, but they are ultimately industrial. dream tank, made from cast bronze, and avalanche, made from ceramic metal, both lure the viewer in with motherly, domestic ease on the surface. But the reality of the sculptures is their industrial, masculine approach. 

Trockel’s Favorite Things is another nuance of her usual themes. The show, though, takes a much less overtly political stance, sacrificing cheekiness for subtlety and melancholy. The lack of obvious commentary on commercialization and explicit references to gender themes removes any shock value to the work and puts greater emphasis on gender contradiction and contemplation.

¹ Stitch, Sidra. “The Affirmation of Difference in the Art of Rosemarie Trockel.” Rosemarie Trockel. By Stich. Munich: Prestel, 1987.

² Sobin, Isabelle. Painting Machines: Industrial Image and Process in Contemporary Art. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1997.