Luggage Store Projection Space is pleased to present ˜all the metals in our cell phones‘ by Ranu Mukherjee
(This piece is also part of a longer work ” ‘color of history, sweating rocks’, on view in the Bay Area Now 6 Exhibition at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts)
˜all the metals in our cell phones™ is 2 minute loop depicting a beaded curtain swaying back and forth with a pinkish dust cloud billowing forwards from behind it. The curtain is composed from images of all the metals that are used to make a cell phone, limestone and sticks. “In this context I want the image to function as a kind of fictional architectural installation, reading at a glance from the street, as a swaying curtain and suggesting some kind of ongoing physical event, which could be a magical or a chaotic transformation. I consider this to be a neo-futurist picture, which takes into consideration the disparity and overlap between the slow geo-temporal scale in which earth elements form, and the speedy socio-cultural framework they enter into once mined. The work is related to a broader investigation into the figure of the nomad and confusion around the materiality of earth elements once they become currency. It also continues my exploration of the relationship between screen based pictorial space and painting,” – Ranu Mukherjee
Ranu Mukherjee is a multi-disciplinary artist making hybrid films, works on paper and collaborative projects. Her recent work investigates the figure of the nomad as well as an imagined personal history of relations between Indian and European/US culture. Generally inspired by encounters with embodiment, ecology, the science-fictional and the unknown, she explores narrative excess and other material conditions brought on by global capitalism.
Ranu co-created the collaborative artist orphan drift in London in the 1990’s. She has participated in numerous exhibitions and screenings internationally in London, Oslo, Berlin, Oberhausen, Vancouver, Santiago and Capetown as well as in the Bay Area. Her first solo exhibition in the US opens at Frey Norris Gallery from June 4- July 30 and she will be an exhibiting artist in Bay Area Now 6 at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts from July 9-September 25.
Ranu is an adjunct professor on the MFA program in Social Practice and Studio Art at the California College of the Arts and in New Genres at the San Francisco Art Institute. She has 4 year old triplets and is trying to grow tentacles. Other projects include Tender Transmissions Radio.