Mika Rottenberg’s work comments on themes such as labor and globalization, the economy and the production of value, utilizing cause and effect phenomena as a cinematic and sculptural language. Her video works weave documentary elements into her visual fiction, and often feature people (mostly women) with exceptional physicality, such as being very tall, large-bodied, or muscular, performing acts that serve as allegories for the human condition in postmodern times.

In Mika Rottenberg’s newest body of work, Bowls Balls Souls Holes, she expands her exploration of the production of objects, units and value, investigating cause and effect phenomena less easily traceable, such as quantum entanglement, magnetic fields, global warming, and the production of luck. Creating physical experience that transcends the autonomous object and cinematic medium, Rottenberg guides us through elaborately constructed physical and metaphysical environments. All activities converge in a Harlem bingo hall where a sequence of numbers opens mechanical portals into an alternate reality. Here, the relationship of cause and effect obeys bizarre laws, and characters linked by invisible forces engage in a parapsychological chain of events. These actions move planets, influence global temperature and shift architecture.

Rottenberg’s work is in the public collections of numerous institutions including the Astrup Fearnley Museum of Modern Art, Oslo; Fonds National d'Art Contemporain, Puteaux, France; FRAC Languedoc-Roussillon, Montpellier, France; the Israel Museum, Jerusalem; Julia Stoschek Collection, Düsseldorf; Magasin 3 Stockholm Konsthall; Marieluise Hessel Foundation, New York; Museum of Modern Art, New York; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; and the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York. Recent solo exhibitions include: Rose Art Museum, Boston (2014); the Israel Museum, Jerusalem (2013); Magasin 3 Stockholm Konsthall (2013); FRAC Languadoc-Roussillon, Montpellier (2012); Nottingham Contemporary (2012); M - Museum Leuven, Leuven, Belgium (2011); De Appel Arts Centre, Amsterdam (2011); San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (2010); La Maison Rouge, Paris (2009); KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin (2006); and PS1 Contemporary Art Center, New York (2004).