ART CITIES: Los Angeles-Mika Rottenberg
Exploring the seduction, magic, and desperation of our hyper-capitalist, globally-connected reality, Mika Rottenberg’s elaborate visual narratives draw on cinematic and sculptural traditions to forge a new language, one that uses cause and effect structures to explore labor and globalization, economy and production of value, and how our own affective relationships are increasingly monetized.
By Efi Michalarou
Photo: Hauser & Wirth Archive
In anticipation of the global release of “Remote” her first feature-length film, made in collaboration with filmmaker Mahyad Tousi, Mika Rottenberg, the first major presentation of her work in Los Angeles. The exhibition feature video works – “Spaghetti Blockchain” (2019), “Cosmic Generator” (2017), “NoNoseKnows” (2015), and “Sneeze” (2012) – in addition to new kinetic sculptures, drawings, and installations. Rottenberg illustrates the absurdity of humanity’s rampant production, distribution, and consumption of objects by juxtaposing existing industry with her own, often unexpected, manufacturing systems. “I think of objects in terms of the processes behind them and the idea that humankind is captured in everything around us. I want to make these processes more visual. If art has any power, it is in making things visible”. From pearl and food cultivation to the mass-production of wholesale plastic items sold in China, Rottenberg excavates the processes humans invent to create a sense of control. In “Spaghetti Blockchain” Rottenberg creates a kaleidoscopic apparatus in which energies and objects transport and transform across states of matter, weaving together images and sounds from myriad sources: Tuvan throat singers in Siberia, the CERN antimatter factory, a potato farm in Maine, and ASMR-inducing tabletop vignettes. As with many of her works, Rottenberg confuses interior and exterior, macro- and microscopic, right-side up and upside-down, self and other, prompting viewers to become more aware of their own bodies. The exhibition also brings together several of Rottenberg’s best-known kinetic works and videos, set within sculptural installations that expand on the videos’ narratives and intensify the disorienting aspects of her work. NoNoseKnows” which premiered at the 56th Venice Biennale in 2015, investigates the peculiar process of cultured pearl manufacturing, in which oysters are deliberately infected to produce pearls. In this work fetish performer Bunny Glamazon sniffs small bouquets, provoking an allergic reaction: her eyes tear up, her nose grows, and her climactic sneeze produces plate after plate of noodles. Elsewhere, tables of women delicately cut and place an irritant into the shells of living oysters, while another team sorts pearls at lightning speed in a factory in Zhuji, China, a major hub for freshwater pearls. To create “Cosmic Generator” which premiered at Skulptur Projekte Münster in 2017, Rottenberg filmed in two locations at opposite ends of the earth: a Chinese restaurant in Mexicali, a border town between Mexico and California, and a wholesale market in Yiwu, China. She collapses notions of distance and time to consider how masses of plastic objects sold in the Yiwu Market circulate the globe freely and rapidly, while people and certain products face greater restrictions to crossing the US-Mexico border.
Photo: Mika Rottenberg, NoNoseKnows (Video Still), 2015, Single – channel video installation, sound, color; 21:58 min, dimensions variable, © Mika Rottenberg, Courtesy the artist and Hauser & Wirth
Info: Hauser & Wirth, 901 East 3rd Street, Los Angeles CA, USA, Duration: 23/6-2/10/2022, Days & Hours: Tue-Fri 11:30-14:30 & 17:30-22:00, Sat-Sun 10:00-14:30 & 17:30-21:00, www.hauserwirth.com/
