IFA (The Institute for Foreign Relations ) presents an exhibition by outstanding German artist Rosemarie Trockel, organized jointly with the Goethe Centre Yerevan and the Armenian Centre for Contemporary Art.
The exhibition on Rosemarie Trockel is part of a series of monographic exhibition in ifa’s program that includes Sigmar Polke, Georg Basalitz and Gerhard Richter. This not only illustrates the standing that accrues to the artist’s work within contemporary art. The artistic positions of the elder colleagues also, in a cryptic way, from the programmatic starting point for Rosemarie Trockel’s concepts.
An art scene that has been largely male-dominated, even into the 1980s, spurs Rosemarie Trockel to dissent. She persistently formulates counter positions in which she confronts the male artist-genius with feminine roles and subject matter.
So she succeeds in directly coming to grips with certain prejudices and clichés that women are confronted with in society and the art world.
One of her earliest masterpieces, ‘Malmaschine’ from 1990, which is shown in our exhibition, takes to the absurd, in virtuoso style, the commonplace about the complaisant handcrafted-mechanical nature of art created by woman’s hand. With its mechanical production of the painterly Gestus, ‘Malmaschine’ reads well as a parody on the topos.
Curator: Gudrun Inboden
March – April, 2021
