Trockel has engaged with evolution, ethnography, semiotics, and consumer culture in her practice, among other topics, but she is perhaps best known for her investigation of gender roles, domesticity, and women’s work. She gained international renown in the mid-1980s for machine-knitted wall works that straddle and complicate the traditional divisions between art and craft, handwork and industrial production. To make this series of prints Trockel pressed yarn directly onto prepared etching plates, creating abstract patterns that resemble things from everyday life: knitting or handwriting, a tiled floor or kitchen towels, and floating balloons or nooses.
Gallery label from Mind and Matter: Alternative Abstractions, 1940s to Now, May 5–August 16, 2010.
