[Gallery Walk] 'Unique Imagination' Crossing the Boundaries Between Reality and Fiction

Hyundai Card Storage, 'Mika Rottenberg' Solo Exhibition
Humorously Unveiling the Hidden Scenes of Economic Globalization
Until March 2 Next Year... Itaewon Hyundai Card Storage

Upon opening the door decorated with sparkling wreaths and lavish ornaments, viewers are greeted by a surreal space filled with dazzling balloons. Mika Rotenberg's video "Cosmic Generator" (2017) playfully embodies cultural hybridity through ingenious spaces and ambiguous logic based on the artist's choices, much like the childhood favorite book "Choose Your Own Adventure."

A scene from Mika Rotenberg's video work 'No Nose Knows' (2015).
[Photo by Hyundai Card]

The artist Mika Rotenberg, who uniquely traverses the boundary between reality and fiction with imaginative creativity, holds her first solo exhibition in Korea, "NoNoseKnows," starting from the 23rd at Hyundai Card Storage in Hannam-dong, Seoul.

Based in New York, Rotenberg is an Argentine-Israeli artist who has presented various works expanding the hybrid nature of global identities in reality. This exhibition showcases 15 works including videos, installations, and sculptures created over more than 20 years, from her early graduate school piece "Mary’s Cherry" (2004) to recent works.

The exhibition is divided into two main spaces. In the first section, visitors can appreciate kinetic sculptures and installations that capture social absurdities with a humorous yet sharp perspective through the human body. Alongside "Finger" (2019), which features long fingernails protruding from the wall rotating meaninglessly, "Sneeze" (2012) directly presents the bizarre image of sneezing as a labor process.

Mika Rotenberg, 'Cosmic Generator' (video still), 2017

"Mary’s Cherry" humorously depicts a woman with a gigantic body pedaling a bicycle tirelessly in a narrow space, while in an unseen space through a small hole, something is exchanged as red fingernails produce maraschino cherries. This work raises questions about the labor process, the objectification of the female body, and the laboring body itself.

The exhibition’s title piece, "NoNoseKnows" (2015), which was exhibited at the 2015 Venice Biennale, juxtaposes footage of a factory in Zhejiang Province, China, where freshwater pearls are held, extracted, and sorted, with Bernie Glamerson, a worker in New York, USA, through cross-editing. Under the desk, a basket holds the employee’s foot, and through a tunnel shot, the screen seemingly transcends time and space like a portal to show the Chinese factory, then shifts to an overhead view of female workers sorting pearls in a windowless space. Through this, the artist subtly implies the vertical and hierarchical relationships of workers on screen solely through geographic relationality.

Mika Rottenberg, Cosmic Generator (video still), 2017

The body and humor give distinctiveness and tactility to Rotenberg’s works, which focus on the abstraction of globalized labor and culture. In "NoNoseKnows," Bernie Glamerson’s nose inflates like Pinocchio’s every time he sneezes, and in "Spaghetti Blockchain" (2019), an excessively processed gelatin roll, resembling a Bologna sausage that is slimy and unnaturally discolored, melts the moment it is sliced.

At the entrance of the exhibition space, pearls are placed in a plastic basket. Observing the pearls that have come here through the process shown in the video prompts viewers to reflect once more on the journey of resources crossing multiple countries in the manufacturing, production, and distribution routes of products, as well as the capitalism behind it.

Exhibition view of kinetic sculptures 'Finger' and 'Lips (Study #3)'
[Photo by Hyundai Card]

At a press conference held before the exhibition, the artist explained, "Even though the times are quite far apart, there is a connection," adding, "Production and labor, and what is artificial and natural are themes that run through the works."

She continued, saying, "Humor is my way as an artist to respond to the world," emphasizing, "I can critique the world, but I believe it should not be shown too seriously or in a commanding way."