Erika Rothenberg

Erika Rothenberg is a Los Angeles based artist whose artistic practice consists of drawing, installation and public art. Known for their humor and directness, her text-based works typically play with mechanisms of display and communication.

Erika Rothenberg
Born
New York City
NationalityAmerican
EducationThe High School of Music & Art, 1967[1]
Alma materUniversity of Chicago; School of Visual Arts Arts and Sciences
Known forInstallation, Public Art, Drawing
AwardsGetty Center Artist’s Fellowship, Art Matters Project Grant, Norton Family Foundation Grant
Websiteerikarothenberg.com

In addition to her participation in the 1992 Documenta, she has had solo exhibitions at Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY (1992);[2] Washington Project for the Arts, Washington, D.C. (1987); New Museum of Contemporary Art, New York, NY (1989);[3] Orange County Museum of Art, Newport Harbor, CA (1989);[4] Contemporary Jewish Museum, San Francisco, CA (1993); Laguna Art Museum, Costa Mesa, CA (1994); and the Centre for Contemporary Arts, Glasgow, Scotland (1995).[5]

Rothenberg has also had numerous one-person gallery exhibitions at Zolla/Lieberman Gallery, Chicago, IL, Rosamund Felsen Gallery, Los Angeles, CA, P*P*O*W, New York, NY, Praz-Delavallade, Paris, FR and Galerie Hubert Winter, Vienna, AU.

Her work is in 17 museum collections, including that of the Museum of Modern Art; Art Institute of Chicago; Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; Stedelijk Museum voor Actuele Kunst, Ghent; and Musée cantonal des beaux-arts de Lausanne.

Early life and career

After studying art at the University of Chicago and the School of Visual Arts in New York, Rothenberg worked as an Art Director for about eight years at McCann Erickson, where her clients included The New York Times Company, Keds Sneakers, NBC TV and Coca-Cola .[6] Her work experience fed her artistic practice which tweaks Advertising's strategies, directness and reach, enabling her to "create social and political commentary with wit." Los Angeles collector Stuart Spence notes that "Erika says things that need to be said and is seldom said as strongly."[7] When presented in store windows or on billboards, her work's accessibility has not only sparked debates, but has attracted vandals and bishops alike. In 2003 Rothenberg outed herself during a lawsuit as "Kathe Kollwitz", one of the de facto leaders of the Guerrilla Girls[8]

Exhibition Highlights

Early Work

For "Atomic Salon" (1982) at Ronald Feldman Gallery, she exhibited a cardboard simulation of a nuclear missile bunker that included control buttons offering employees a choice between "Launch" and "Lunch."[9]

Morally Superior Products 1980–1990

In addition to publishing Morally Superior Products: A New! Idea for Advertising,[10] she printed advertising storyboards for Progresso, the sauce that fights racism and Right to Life Chicken. For her first solo exhibition at P*P*O*W, Michael Brenson noted a bleakness "that suggests the view of America in the best works of F. Scott Fitzgerald and Joan Didion."[11]

Freedom of Expression National Monument 1984/2004

In 2003, then ‘‘New York Times’’ architecture critic Herbert Muschamp recommended that a 1984 public work, originally commissioned by Creative Times for Art on the Beach, be rebuilt at Ground Zero in lieu of the then proposed Freedom Museum.[12] And the next year, Creative Time reinstated the Freedom of Expression National Monument, a collaboration between Rothenberg, architect Laurie Hawkinson and activist John Malpede, Founder-Director of Los Angeles Poverty Department. During the 2004 election season, it occupied Foley Square surrounded by several Manhattan courthouses.[13]

Narratives 1987-2008

Rothenberg’s Monument to a Bear (2002-2003, Edition of 2) is on permanent display outside Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego in La Jolla, California. This sculpture memorializes a bear with burnt paws that was rescued by firefighters only to end up legally hunted soon after he was released into the wild. For Everyone Who Sat in this Chair (2002), also from this series, she adorned a chair with photos of the scores of people who once sat on it. .[14]

Fame and (Un)Fame 1988-2001

Regarding Santa Barbara’s 1988 "Home Show," Rothenberg wrote, "I turned the Waidner’s family room into an Anti-Media Room – with paintings satirizing viewing habits and a special device designed to give ordinary people the power and respect usually reserved for people on the air: The Celebrity Simulator.... If you want your family and friends to pay attention to what you say, now you can say it on TV, right in your own home."[15]

Commissioned to make a Los Angeles Metro Station for the Green Line's Lakewood Boulevard Station, Rothenberg produced The Wall of Un(Fame)(1995). A play on Hollywood's Walk of Fame, her wall immortalizes the names, handprints and footprints of over 650 residents of nearby communities Bellflower, Downey and Paramount.[16]

In 2001, Rothenberg completed a work for the Hollywood shopping center adjacent the Kodak Theatre, home to the annual Academy Awards. The Road to Hollywood: How Some of Us Got Here features actual stories of wannabes and some who made it, recorded in black and white marble mosaics, embedded in a winding red-concrete carpet.[17]

America the Perfect Country 1980-1990

For her 1989 Newport Harbor Museum of Art exhibition "America the Perfect Country" she exhibited posters displaying quirky statistics about Americans that challenge the many myths underlying American ideology. The center piece was a putt putt golf game inviting players to choose the best country, though all but one option are blocked. Los Angeles Times critic Cathy Curtis credited Rothenberg for "co-opting the seductiveness of the very media Establishment whose quick fixes and intellectual pabulum she is out to discount."[18]

Freedom of Expression Products 1989-1990

Her 1989 exhibition "Have You Attacked America Today?" in the New Museum's windows displayed pharmaceutical-like products meant to ease citizen dissent (anti-apathy ointments, protest pills and flag-burning kits). Her game plan succeeded, since vandals tossed a metal garbage can through the window and looted most of these goods, which she replaced.[19]

Signboards 1990–present

To date, she has produced three different signboards, each an edition of ten, announcing daily church activities that belie societal ills.

Greeting Card Works 1991-2015

For her 1992 Museum of Modern Art exhibition, "Projects 36: Erika Rothenberg," she exhibited House of Cards, which included 90 greeting cards, displayed alongside others the fit particular categories like Hope, Religion, Crime, Art and Culture, Sexual Abuse, Abortion, Civil Rights, Health, Education plus four more.[20] In 2015, she exhibited an expanded version at Zolla|Lieberman Gallery in Chicago. Writing in ‘‘Artforum’’, Michelle Grabner described "irony in Rothenberg’s hands [as] a barbed weapon, and she wields it to underscore the very real injustices she observes in daily life."[21]

Death 1993-2015

"Bad Times," her 1995 exhibition in collaboration with Los Angeles costume designer Tracy Tynan at the Centre for Contemporary Arts in Glasgow, Scotland featured suicide notes appended to body bags. A local Bishop's calling for its boycott led to four BBC news programs focused on this ensuing controversy.[22]

Sex Lives of Animals 1995-1998

For this series, Rothenberg juxtaposes enigmatic animal drawings with animal testimonies.

Teaching, residencies, fellowships

Rothenberg has presented her work in scores of museums and universities across the United States, as well as in Scotland and Austria. She was a Visiting Assistant Professor in 1995 and 1997 at the University of California, Los Angeles; Graduate and Undergraduate faculty from 1996-1998 at Otis College of Art, Los Angeles; and a Visiting Artist at California Institute of the Arts, 1987 and 1989-1991.

References
  1. "Notable Alumni," Alumni & Friends of LaGuardia High School website. Accessed Nov. 2, 2016.
  2. Patricia C. Philips. “Review.” Artforum,. October 1992.
  3. Elizabeth Hess. “Protest Art Vandalized at New Museum.” Village Voice. December 26, 1989.
  4. Cathy Curtis. “Coloring-Book Critique of 'America, the Perfect Country'.” Los Angeles Times. August 19, 1989.
  5. Tim Rayment. “Uproar Greets Art Show of Stolen Suicide Notes.” The Sunday Times. January 22, 1995.
  6. Cal Lom. The Power to Provoke. Amelie Wallace Gallery. 1984
  7. http://lagunaartmuseum.org/erika-rothenberg/
  8. https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2005/05/30/girls-behaving-badly
  9. http://erikarothenberg.com/#erikarothenberg
  10. S/Z Press. New York, NY, 1983
  11. Michael Brenson. “Erika Rothenberg”. The New York Times. March 28, 1986.
  12. Herbert Muschamp. “Picturing the New Ground Zero”. The New York Times. August 31, 2003.
  13. http://creativetime.org/programs/archive/2004/freedom/Freedom_PressRelease.pdf
  14. Susan Freudenheim. “Casting a Cold Eye.” The Los Angeles Times. March 25, 2005.
  15. http://notesonlooking.com/2011/07/one-more-time-for-home-show- 1988/
  16. http://www.metro.net/about/art/artworks/wall-unfame/
  17. Christopher Knight. “The ‘Road’ Daringly Traveled.” The Los Angeles Times. November 30, 2001.
  18. Cathy Curtis. “Coloring-Book Critique of ‘America the Perfect Country’.” The Los Angeles Times. August 19, 1989.
  19. Elizabeth Hess. “Protest Art Vandalized at New Museum.” ‘‘Village Voice’’. January 22, 1995.
  20. https://www.moma.org/momaorg/shared/pdfs/docs/press_archives/7044/releases/MOMA_1992_0052_45.pdf?2010
  21. Michelle Grabner. “Zolla/Lieberman Gallery.” Artforum. Summer 2015.
  22. “Bishop Attacks Suicide Note Exhibition.” The Sunday Telegraph. January 22, 1995.

Further reading
  • ‘‘The Power to Provoke’’, SUNY Press: Old Westbury, 1984.
  • ‘‘Home Show,’’, Santa Barbara Contemporary Arts Forum: Santa Barbara, 1988.
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