The Necessities of Life and the Consequences of Dreams

Courtesy Lenke Rothman Estate

Lenke Rothman uses the title The Necessities of Life and the Consequences of Dreams more than once throughout her working career, which spans more than six decades. One such time the title appears for a collage containing a copper engraving of Ikarus and Daedalus framed by red and green fabric, lace, plastic foil, and a feather. Here Daedalus lovingly attaches the wings made of beeswax and feathers, pre-flight, while Ikarus’ distorted pose suggests that his body already knows that it will fall.

A persistent and perpetual present, set between an unmovable past and an unknowable future, is at the center of Rothman’s practice, which grapples with the beauty of the mundane, and the humor and irony of the everyday in life after the Shoah. Her body of work consists of a range of media and formats; drawings, paintings, and watercolors in the 1950s and early ’60s give way to acrylic boxes, talismans, found and altered objects, and installations in the 1970s and ’80s that grow from Rothman’s attempt to embrace and hold the world that surrounds her through various collecting practices. The exhibition at Croy Nielsen traces this development, from the artist’s paintings and vocabulary of stitches that give way to fabric collages and arranged objects in acrylic boxes, where the body and clothing fuse in intimate bondage as a membrane between personhood and the world, memory and the present.

– Milan Ther

The exhibition is part of Curated by – Vienna’s annual gallery festival.