Mika Rottenberg at the MAC | From plastic to cosmic

Presented two years ago in Toronto, New York artist Mika Rottenberg’s first exhibition in Montreal is finally arriving at the Museum of Contemporary Art after some Covid-related delays. At the heart of this proposal: three video installations, which take us on a journey from Mexico to China and from the plastic to the cosmic, between Marxist theory and contemporary kitsch.

Mika Rottenberg’s works make for a perfect summer display after more than two years of the pandemic. His video installations and his sculptures make people laugh while exploring our addiction to hyperconsumption, which is based, in essence, on alienating production chains.

“Several works deal with materiality and our relationship with the material. Materialism in the sense of our obsession with objects, but also, more philosophically, in the Marxist sense of the term. We are all also made of living matter and it allows us to connect more viscerally to the works”, explains the artist born in Argentina and living in the United States for years.

Mika Rottenberg is the recipient of major awards, such as the James Dicke Award from the Smithsonian and the Kurt Schwitters Fellowship. She has exhibited all over Europe, in Jerusalem and Beijing, too. His video NoNoseKnows – presented at the MAC – was noticed at the Venice Biennale in 2015.

social surrealism

The artist describes his approach as “social surrealism” with works that underline the ambiguity between the desire for consumption and its excesses. She does this with humor by observing the globalization of relations between producers and consumers of goods of all kinds.

His videos play on the attraction/repulsion paradox by giving great importance to the plastic, to the colors, as well as to the soundtrack.

“I try to evoke this confusion. Something amusing and revealing happened to me to this effect. When I was filming food in the studio with my cell phone, it sent me ads for restaurants in Brooklyn. Everything is ultimately connected. »

Fiction/reality

His works use mixed strategies navigating between fiction and documentary to create a narrative where real characters rub shoulders with performers in a continuum reminiscent of production lines.

In NoNoseKnowsfor example, real-life pearl farmers in China are connected through the montage to a Caucasian winemaker, fetish artist Bunny Glamazon, who seems to be their boss and kicks out a plate of pasta every time she sneezes.

“In recent years, this fiction/reality theme has become very relevant in the world. I like to intervene in reality with fictional elements, but, apart from a few exceptions, none of the people we see in the videos, in a real life place or set, are professional actors. »

Around a hexagonal shape, the video Spaghetti Blockchain shows the absurdity of manipulations of heterogeneous objects whose beauty does not hide the futility. With Cosmic Generator (Variant Tunnel), it is Mexico and China that are linked by a spatio-temporal tunnel leading to similar intensive production and hyperconsumption activities.

Ambiguity

Ambiguity always. Mika Rottenberg is a tightrope walker who takes us on a tightrope between our various perceptions and reactions as consumers.

“But I don’t judge the people who work in these industries in any way,” she continues. After my trip to China, I realized that at home I have a lot of objects that come from Asia. It is our experience as consumers that interests me. »

It is up to visitors to the exhibition to question themselves about the value of the objects that surround them and their power of attraction. Like this fake manicured finger sticking out of one of the walls of the museum or even this half-open vermilion mouth that encourages us to look inside… as voyeurs that we are!

Mika Rottenberg’s video installations and sculptures are exhibited at the Montreal Museum of Contemporary Art, temporarily installed at Place Ville Marie, until October 10.