Rosemarie Trockel

Rosemarie Trockel used these little cars in a film that she made for the 1999 Venice Biennale. Her installation consisted of three films projected in three different rooms, representing the past, the present, the future. The past presented the memories of children's games and fantasy worlds, represented in a cheerful way by eight wondrously designed and decorated children's cars. Such as a wooly Volkswagen Beetle, a futuristic aluminum car and a scrap metal car which is rusty and dented. Each car has its own character, and in a series of drawings Rosemarie Trockel also indicates that a certain type of driver goes with each car. She sees the Alu Auto being driven by a child wearing a 'silver astronaut outfit' and the 'brush car' by a child with a crew cut. The jolly fantasy imagination exuding from these cars might evoke childhood memories in adults. To children they first and foremost look like inviting toys. With Kinderspielplatz Trockel has made a work in which she investigates and explores attitudes of observation and participation by letting an 'adult' work entice one to ‘childlike' perceptions, while at the same time presenting the playing child as an alter ego of the adult 'homo ludens'.