The Brooklyn Rail

When considering a historical moment that feels as destabilized as our current world order, I can’t help but ruminate on the notion of the zeitgeist, that ever-felicitous term derived from the German words for “time” and “spirit.” As our current government plunders its institutions, surveils and attacks its citizens, and kidnaps and deports those without proper papers, the foundational structure of the nation suddenly seems insecure. We’re dangerously sinking into an oubliette of our own making. Perhaps that’s why German artist Rosemarie Trockel’s two-part exhibition—taking place at both Sprüth Magers uptown and Gladstone in Chelsea—is so apropos to the zeitgeist. Trockel has fluidly addressed a wide range of topics over her four-decade career: femininity and its objectification; violence, repulsion, and pleasure; and systems of classification, to name just a few. But one throughline continually pulses beneath the surface of her protean, genre-defying work: an interest in and an appraisal of the stability and instability of foundations.

The dual-venue presentation informally begins at Sprüth Magers, where the exhibition, Material, is largely composed of older works. A number of these are made from plastic foam: a spongy, inherently unreliable material. One of the earliest works on view, Lol Stein (ca. 1990), is an incisive representation of some of Trockel’s early concerns. Eleven amorphous foam objects are lined up in a vitrine mounted to the wall. The installation is named for the main character of Marguerite Duras’s 1964 feminist novel, The Ravishing of Lol Stein, in which the young, female title character becomes the voyeur of her friend’s love affair. Aligned like specimens under glass in a natural history museum display, Lol Stein requires that the viewer approach closely to really see these soft sculptures, in a way that becomes intimate. Elsewhere, a plinth made of the same foam supports a sculpture of a disembodied, platinum-glazed leg. The uncertain platform is intrinsic to the untitled 2006 work and its precarity lends an extra sense of unease to an already unsettling sculpture—a phantom limb hovering in the center of the gallery.

Speakers’ Corner (2012) jettisons the foam in favor of ceramic—another material which Trockel frequently uses—but in this work, the pedestal itself is the subject. Two ceramic boxes, resembling soapboxes, are stacked one on top of the other. The title alludes to the famed area of Hyde Park in London, established in the nineteenth century, where any person is welcome to exercise their right of free speech and publicly expound on the topic of their choice. Though the sculpture is now over a decade old, the solemnizing of these humble, makeshift footstools in Trockel’s work takes on new poignancy in light of crackdowns on the freedoms of speech, press, and protest by the current administration. Presiding over the entire exhibition is one recent sculpture, Mute Servant (2024)—a replica of an eighteenth or nineteenth-century musket, made in glazed ceramic. Installed opposite from Speakers’ Corner, it’s a reminder that the freedoms we enjoy were begotten by violence, and that violence itself remains the underbelly of our times.

Returning to older works to reconsider and rework them is intrinsic to Trockel’s practice, and one such recast sculpture greets the viewer upon entry to The Kiss, the second part of the exhibition on view at Gladstone. Wette gegen sich selbst (Bet Against Yourself) (2005/2024) is a sofa sculpture: a signature trope that reemerges in Trockel’s work. This sofa sculpture, long and low to the ground, is made from Plexiglas, with heating coils from an oven serving as the individual seats, suggesting a sturdy, but unreliable piece of support furniture. Also incorporated into the sculpture are a number of record album sleeves which suggest a wide variety of meanings and interpretations. One in particular, The Nation’s Nightmare, is a 1951 album that recorded a six-part radio news documentary produced by CBS Radio. The program delved into perceived vices of that zeitgeist, now seventy-five years gone by: the dangers of marijuana, gambling and sports betting, and waterfront organized crime. As she does so often and so deftly, Trockel has embedded an art historical reference in the work; the album cover, depicting a young man shooting drugs in one drawing, while in the other two stevedores fight in front of a large ship, was illustrated by a not-yet-famous Andy Warhol. One of Trockel’s clock sculptures from 2005 is also fused to one side of the work, sandwiched in by a rubber face mask and a mirror. It’s a further reminder of the “spirit times” through which chronology propels us, and from which escape can seem impossible.

Overhead in the spacious gallery, a sculpture entitled Bird’s Eye View (2025) hangs from the ceiling. A heavy prison door, the kind that might enclose a solitary confinement cell, is cast in bronze and aluminum. Suspended upside-down, the small pass-through window is sprung open, providing a glimpse of freedom—perceived but unattainable—that may lie just on the other side. The door hangs well overhead, so that audiences must gaze upwards to see it, frustrating any possible view through this little window. Emblematic of the contradictions she is able to sustain across her work, Bird’s Eye View embodies both the forbidding and the opportune. The concept of the zeitgeist is loosely held, and Trockel lets the cards fall as they may.