Rosemarie Trockel's Feminist Critique at Moderna Museet Malmö

The exhibition "The same different" at Moderna Museet Malmö (until March 3, 2019) presents Rosemarie Trockel's hybrid aesthetic blending Pop, Informel, Abstraction, and Analytical Painting. Trockel (born 1952 in Schwerte) uses industrial and craft techniques to examine gender dynamics. In the late 1980s, while feminism was established in the US art world but less so in Cold War-divided Germany, Trockel and Pia Stadtbäumer formed the German avant-garde. Trockel attacked the military-industrial complex through "domestic" works like knitted paintings (e.g., Yellow Mood, South Window), reinterpreting traditional female crafts as metaphors for women's rights and workforce entry. Everyday objects like hot plates and dishes are decontextualized, colored like Rorschach blots, to critique consumer culture and gender roles. Works such as Question of Time (2012) and Time is Irresistible (2017) explore the individual's relationship with time, mixing pop and radical elements with irony.