Mika Rottenberg
12 Mar - 08 May 2011
© Mika Rottenberg, Video still from "Tropical Breeze" (2004)
© Mika Rottenberg, Video still from "Dough" (2006)
© Mika Rottenberg, Video still from "Squeeze" (2010)
Courtesy of Mary Boone Gallery in collaboration with Nicole Klagsbrun Gallery
Courtesy of Mary Boone Gallery in collaboration with Nicole Klagsbrun Gallery
Exceptional women, such as the powerful Heather Foster, the sizeable Queen Raqui (‘Her body Utterly Amazing, Her agility astounding’), and the super-tall erotic model ‘Bunny Glamazone’, become absurd characters who use their bodies as production machines in the colourful films by the New York-based artist Mika Rottenberg. This spring the films of Rottenberg (born in Buenos Aires in 1976, but now living in New York) receive their Dutch première in de Appel.
Linking together often bizarre scenes, Rottenberg presents enigmatic working processes in which physical “waste materials” – such as blood, sweat and tears, or hair and nails – create new products, sometimes mixed up with salad or make-up. Rottenberg is said to make “seriously political art that is preposterously funny”. In fact with her almost surrealist films she comments on existing ideas about a woman’s right to self-determination, the idealisation of the stereotype of the body and the position of workers in a globalised capitalist economy. The starting point in this is often the miraculous nature of reality. The artist has said: “I see a lot of magic in so many mundane moments”. Rottenberg presents her films in complex installations she has built, which consist partly of her film decors and which she will re-create specially for her exhibition in de Appel.
Linking together often bizarre scenes, Rottenberg presents enigmatic working processes in which physical “waste materials” – such as blood, sweat and tears, or hair and nails – create new products, sometimes mixed up with salad or make-up. Rottenberg is said to make “seriously political art that is preposterously funny”. In fact with her almost surrealist films she comments on existing ideas about a woman’s right to self-determination, the idealisation of the stereotype of the body and the position of workers in a globalised capitalist economy. The starting point in this is often the miraculous nature of reality. The artist has said: “I see a lot of magic in so many mundane moments”. Rottenberg presents her films in complex installations she has built, which consist partly of her film decors and which she will re-create specially for her exhibition in de Appel.