Mika Rottenberg

Sacks of pearls, inflatable toys, plastic flowers, and sizzling frying pans, Mika Rottenberg’s film installations explore the relationships between immaterial goods and manufactured products and blur the line between reality and fiction. 

Cosmic Generator by artist Mika Rottenberg is a video work that establishes a connection between various places and actors, including Calexico (California), Mexicali (Mexico) and Yiwu (China), to recreate the imaginary life of an object, from its production in a factory to the moment it is sold.
The film, whose title is a reference to the engineer and physicist Nikola Tesla (1856-1943), highlights the absurdity of our human condition and systems of production and circulation. The artist relates footage from a restaurant and a Calexico shop to a huge plastic market in Yiwu, China. The  tunnel system suggests a reflection on how certain objects are allowed to circulate freely in the world, while for others, traveling a distance of a few meters can be a long and complex process.
The tiredness displayed by some of the female protagonists is also a reference to sleep as a temporary means of retreat and as one of the few remaining bodily resources that cannot be exploited.

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Born in 1976, she lives and works in the United States. After spending her formative years in Israel, she moved to the United States where she graduated from the School of Visual Arts in New York. She received the Kurt Schwitters Prize 2019 and the James Dicke Contemporary Artist Prize from the Smithsonian American Art Museum in 2018. Recent exhibitions include Mika Rottenberg: Spaghetti Blockchain, Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal, 2021, Montréal (CA); SNEEZE, Tai Kwun – Centre for Heritage and Arts, 2020, Hong Kong (CI); Busan Biennale 2022, South Korea and Nothing is Lost. Art and Matter in Transformation, GAMeC Galleria d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea di Bergamo, 2021, Bergamo (IT). She is represented by the Hauser & Wirth gallery.

XII edition
The life of things
and  the invisible qualities of objects
22 – 28 September 2022

Venue:
Teatro Carcano
Corso di Porta Romana, 63,
MM3 Crocetta, Milan