Artist | Mika Rottenberg
Date | February 27 – August 10, 2025
Location | KUNST HAUS WIEN, Vienna

With the exhibition Antimatter Factory Kunst Haus Wien is presenting an extensive and varied insight into the multifaceted work of Mika Rottenberg, including her best-known films and installations from the years 2003 t0 2022, a selection of kinetic, in part interactive sculptures with surreal functional and material compositions from the years 2020 to 2022, as well as her most recent work group, Lampshares from 2024, which combines natural organic structures with coloured lampshades made of recycled plastic.

The title of the exhibition, Antimatter Factory, refers to the name of a research department at CERN, the European Organisation for Nuclear Research in Geneva which has been conducting experiments on antimatter. Mika Rottenberg partly filmed Spaghetti Blockchain (2019) at CERN, weaving together the complex processes of particle acceleration with seemingly mundane yet intricate human labor. Mika Rottenberg creates worlds of fantasy which vibrate with a seductive sensuality and an irritating logic. From a Marxist perspective – which is very much tongue-in-cheek – and focusing on the human body, she examines the prevailing conditions of capitalist production and the value of labour. From a pearl farm to a large Chinese wholesale market specialising in cheap plastic goods and the production of ready-to-eat meals: Rottenberg’s works disclose the grotesque mechanisms of global supply chains, industrial manufacturing and work harnessed solely to profit, while showing up the scrupulous exploitation of humans and resources. With a humour that is once absurdist and disarming, the artist illuminates our ever-increasing alienation in a hyper-capitalist world and reminds us of the urgent need to disengage from these structures.

Questioning the boundaries between reality and imagination runs like a golden thread through Mika Rottenberg’s film installations. People and things appear to be set in motion, while space and time, past and future blend into one another. The people in her films are involved in absurd activities: they sneeze steaks, rabbits, lightbulbs or even whole meals on tables and plates; they moisten hair, feet or buttocks; they sit amidst plastic goods or glittering garlands, waiting for customers. Rottenberg’s multifaceted work can be understood as a mirror reflecting our globalised age, an age “in which nothing disappears anymore and everything is amassed through frenetic archiving” (Nicolas Bourriaud, The Radicant, 2009).
Co-Curator: Barbara Horvath

The exhibition is a cooperation with the Museum Tinguely in Basel and the Lehmbruck Museum in Duisburg.

Exhibition Website

Accompanying the exhibition an online catalogue was published.