Trockel’s untitled “stove painting” combines kitchen-grade hot plates and an enamel surface used for stovetops, creating a bold geometric composition and social critique. Its form wryly mocks the history of abstract painting and Minimalist sculpture, two movements that ignored women.

Trockel uses manufactured elements to allude to intimate, everyday activities like feeding and cleaning. She notes the plates are like dots on dice, symbolizing the chance that such gendered domestic work might be upended. This is a jab at the idea of arbitrary boundaries of labor that, just like similarly nonsensical art world thresholds, should be questioned and upended.

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