Rosemarie Trockle at the New Museum
What I liked best about the Rosemarie Trockle show at the New Museum was the almost baffling diversity of work. A lot of it I didn’t really get into or didn’t get at all. And some of it I liked a lot. I appreciated also the inclusion of work that influences her. But what I loved best was that the work couldn’t be really be pinned down. She’s done so many different kinds of pieces. It brought to mind the exact opposite attitude expressed in a recent New Yorker article about the artist Laurie Simmons. Reading the article I was struck by what seemed a rather cautious, even conservative, position toward art making (a position most likely influenced by the nature of the art market):
Feeling that she should work with real people instead of dolls she began experimenting with a waterproof camera and eventually talked several friends into flying to Japan and letting her photograph them nude or semi-nude, in an improvised water ballet. “I still love the work, but it was a mistake,” she conceded. “It was too far from what I’d been doing and it confused the hell out of everyone.” She went back to dolls after that. (Dec 10, 2012)
She went back to dolls after that… Humm. Maybe in Europe it’s ok to be more freewheeling?