Based in New York, Mika Rottenberg is known for her multimedia installations presenting video works in site-specific sculptural environments. The videos explore the relations between the body, labor and systems of production through surreal scenarios involving a recurring cast of characters that includes body-builders, a contortionist and women with extreme physical attributes. In the videos, architectural constructions are used partly to isolate specific bodily excretions and byproducts: sweat, finger nails, tears and hair have variously been employed in Rottenberg's allegorical assembly lines, which are often powered by manual mechanisms such as pedals and foot pumps.
This exhibition introduces to a Japanese audience the central themes of Rottenberg's practice through a selection of related photographs and drawings. On display will be the photo series "Color Study/Doughface" (2010), depicting different colored heaps of dough presented against simple wooden backdrops; a group of studies made in 2009 in which through built-in openings and compartments, disembodied legs and arms extending into the space of a strange chamber begin to assume ornamental and functional roles; the large-scale print Pocono Party #1 (2007), a mise-en-scène featuring several of Rottenberg's frequent collaborators; and a portfolio commissioned in 2008 by the New York-based magazine W, Performance Stills, that inverts the ideals of typical fashion iconography. Together, these photographs provide insight into Rottenberg's interest in specific bodily and sculptural forms, her sense of composition and her working methods.
Also included will be a group of small drawings made especially for this exhibition. Incorporating figurative elements without functioning completely as representations, the rows of irregular shapes, dense scribbles and rouged thumbprints in the drawings suggest a kind of hieroglyphics that encode a commentary on the act of drawing itself, as well as, perhaps, the commentary on the body and production that is made explicit in the videos.
About the Artist
Mika Rottenberg was born in Buenos Aires in 1976, and graduated with an MFA from Columbia University, New York, in 2004. In 2011 a monographic exhibition of her work, "Mika Rottenberg: Dough cheese squeeze and tropical breeze. Video Works 2003-2010," was held at De Appel Arts Centre, Amsterdam. Other solo exhibitions include San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (2010); KW Institute of Contemporary Art, Berlin (2006); and PS1 Contemporary Art Center, New York (2005). Additionally, her work has been exhibited in the 2008 Whitney Biennial; the Guggenheim Museum (Bilbao and New York, 2009 and 2010, respectively); the Tate Modern, London (2007); the Museum of Modern Art, New York (2005); and in the survey "Uncertain States of America: American Art in the Third Millenium" (multiple venues, 2005-06).
