MIAMI, FLA.- Mika Rottenberg’s self-titled solo exhibition at
The Bass presents a selection of work created within the past two years. Through a globally influenced practice, not pinned to nationality, identity or location, Rottenberg blends fiction and humor to illuminate tangible contemporary concerns. Her visceral curiosity, particularly around the female body, combined with a personal interest in labor processes, influences the production of her video and sculptural installations.
Her work often focuses on elucidating the mechanics of late-stage, global capitalism by way of absurd and poetic comparisons. Through architecturally constructed sculpture combined with sensory video experiences, Rottenberg creates immersive scenarios that probe connections between alternate universes and visible reality, calling attention to the tenuous closeness between the real and the absurd. Her works highlight the human body’s relationship to capitalist production, often exploring the actual commodification of bodily possessions, and persons themselves. Similarly, Rottenberg’s kinetic works operate as constructed mechanisms that allude to other-worldly scenes, providing enticing vitality to otherwise mundane, common materials.
The exhibition occupies all galleries comprising the historic building of the museum and features the U.S. debut of several works, including a new variant of the artist’s recent commission for Skulptur Projekte Münster (2017) titled Cosmic Generator (loaded #2). In a parallel gallery, NoNoseKnows (AP) (2015), punctuates the space with a video and sculptural installation that combines fact and fiction, documenting a group of Chinese laborers who harvest pearls from oysters in Zhuji, China, empty high rises near Shanghai, and a fictional set built in the artist’s studio in New York. The work first debuted at the 56th Venice Biennale (2015).
Mika Rottenberg (b. 1976, Buenos Aires, Argentina) lives and works in New York. Rottenberg’s work has been exhibited internationally at: Skulptur Projekte Münster 2017 (Münster, Germany), The Louisiana Museum of Modern Art (Humlebæk, Denmark), Palais de Tokyo (Paris, France), the Venice Biennale (2015), the Israel Museum (Jerusalem, Israel), Magasin III (Stockholm, Sweden), FRAC LanguadocRoussillon (Montpellier, Canada), Nottingham Contemporary (Nottingham, United Kingdom), M – Museum Leuven (Leuven, Belgium), De Appel Arts Centre (Amsterdam, Netherlands), San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (San Francisco, United States), La Maison Rouge (Paris, France), KW Institute for Contemporary Art (Berlin, Germany), and MoMA PS1 Contemporary Art Center (New York, United States). Her work was also included in the Taipei Biennial (2014), the 13th Istanbul Biennial (2013), the Whitney Biennial (2008), and the Cuban Biennial (2000). Her works are held in the permanent collections of the Brooklyn Museum, Magasin 3, Murakami Collection, the Museum of Modern Art, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, and the Tel Aviv Museum of Art, among others.
Mika Rottenberg is organized by Leilani Lynch, Assistant Curator, The Bass.
UGO RONDINONE good evening beautiful blue On view through February 19, 2018
Spanning the entirety of the museum's newly designed second floor, good evening beautiful blue by Ugo Rondinone is a part of a major multi-institution retrospective comprising works that span three decades of the artist’s practice, from the late 1990s to the present. From poetic installations in public spaces to life-size drawings, Rondinone's work balances on the edge of euphoria and depression. The exhibition centers on the work, vocabulary of solitude (2014-2016), an installation of 45 life-size clown figures, each engaged in a different everyday activity, such as sleeping, daydreaming, waking up, sitting and running. Marking its first appearance in the U.S. in nearly two decades, a separate gallery presents an immersive six-channel video installation titled It's late… (1998), displaying slow-motion loops of people doing various isolated mundane tasks, resulting in a thought provoking and introspective space. Also on view is clockwork for oracles II (2008), a multi-wall installation comprised of 52-mirrored windows (one for each week in the year) set against a backdrop of whitewashed pages from the Miami Herald. Together, the selection of works places the visitor in an arena of contemplation and introspection, confronted by installations that stimulate self-reflection.
Ugo Rondinone (b. 1964, Brunnen, Switzerland) is a mixed-media artist who lives and works in New York. Recent solo exhibitions include: the world just makes me laugh at Berkeley Art Museum (Berkeley, California), let’s start this day again at Contemporary Art Center (Cincinnati), giorni d’oro + notti d’argento at Museo d’Arte Contemporanea di Roma, Seven Magic Mountains organized by Art Production Fund and the Nevada Museum of Art (Nevada), vocabulary of solitude at Museum Boijmans van Beuningen (Rotterdam), i love john giorno at Palais de Tokyo (Paris), artists and poets at Vienna Secession (Vienna), breathe walk die at Rockbund Art Museum (Shanghai), human nature organized by Public Art Fund in Rockefeller Plaza, (New York), we run through a desert on burning feet, all of us are glowing our faces look twisted at Art Institute of Chicago, thank you silence at M-Museum Leuven (Belgium). His work is in the collections of MoMA (New York), ICA Boston, SFMOMA, Walker Art Center (Minneapolis), The Bass (Miami Beach) and Dallas Museum of Art, among others.
good evening beautiful blue is organized by Silvia Karman Cubiñá, Executive Director & Chief Curator, The Bass, along with Leilani Lynch, Assistant Curator, and Nathaniel Hitchcock.
PASCALE MARTHINE TAYOU Beautiful On view through April 2, 2018
Born in Cameroon and based in Ghent, Belgium, Pascale Marthine Tayou brings his itinerant practice to Miami Beach for his exhibition, Beautiful, creating an organic and collaboratively formed presentation of work made in the last decade. Visitors will navigate between stacked Arabic pots, Colonnes Pascale (2012), and encounter Tayou's colorful Fresque de Craies (2015), constructed of hundreds of chalk pieces arranged beneath West African colon tourist figures, gold foil, and plastic eggs. Tayou, whose practice spans media and subject matter, is an alchemist of sorts. His work fluidly transforms and recasts the viewer’s understanding of materials, objects and narratives. Through the context of existing social, cultural and political structures, Tayou’s creations both mediate between cultures and question the frameworks in which they exist.
Beautiful centers around an intervention with the museum’s permanent collection where Tayou presents his work alongside his own selection of objects from The Bass’ founding collection. The dialogue between contemporary artworks and objects from the past speak to his overall practice and material considerations for incorporating objects encountered by chance or from his immediate surroundings into the installation. Further, Tayou’s concern for the decolonization of histories and territories aligns with the international and transient nature of Miami Beach and the impact tourism continues to have in shaping the city. Additionally, a newly commissioned, site-specific work by Tayou called Welcome Wall (2015), composed of animated LED signs that read "welcome" in over 70 languages, broadcasts a message of profound inclusion from the lobby of the museum.
Pascale Marthine Tayou (b. 1966, Yaoundé, Cameroon) lives and works between Belgium and Cameroon. Tayou has contributed to many major international exhibitions and art events, such as documenta 11 (2002) and the Venice Biennale (2005 and 2009). He has had solo shows at Museo d’Arte Contemporanea di Roma (Rome, Italy, 2004 and 2013), Stedelijk Museum voor Actuele Kunst (Ghent, Belgium, 2004), Malmö Konsthall (Malmö, Sweden, 2010), Mudam (Luxembourg City, Luxembourg, 2011), Kunsthaus Bregenz (Bregenz, Austria, 2014), Fowler Museum at UCLA (Los Angeles, United States, 2014), the Serpentine Sackler Gallery (London, United Kingdom, 2015), Bozar (Brussels, Belgium, 2015), Musée de l’Homme (Paris, France, 2015) and CAC Malaga (Malaga, Spain, 2016).
Beautiful is organized by Leilani Lynch, Assistant Curator, The Bass, and Nathaniel Hitchcock.
