Wool is the material of choice for artist Rosemarie Trockel. For a long time, the fibre was considered of lesser value in art-making, being primarily associated with handicrafts. It was also a material traditionally used by women. Trockel has subversively taken on these stereotypes by using machine-produced wool - rather than handmade textiles - in both pictorial works and garments.
The short video work Pausa centres on a strikingly cut skirt with long fringes, made of coarsely woven wool. A young woman wearing this item enters a small room, undresses, and with a single hand motion, transforms the skirt into a blanket to cover herself with. However, the action itself proves to be of less interest to Trockel than the skirt’s materiality and detailing, to which she directs the viewer’s gaze in a single tracking shot. This emphasis places the warm wool fabric in stark contrast to the bare room and its only piece of furniture, a bed covered in grey plastic. Three years later, Trockel recreated this scene in the form of a sculpture, which is also part of the Sammlung Goetz.