RPM Project

marina font 

Rhonda Mitrani

Patricia Schnall-Gutierrez

Artist Statement

Our work, while independent of one another and expressed in different mediums, utilize similar threads of gesture and theme.  Together, we explore how feminine ritual transcends into the mainstream, so that an awareness of a culturally constructed world is deconstructed by our unique experiences. 

We arrive from three different ages, covering a broad perception of life through a daughter, a mother and a grandmother. Our multi-media installations create a back and forth between boundaries of time, history, culture and levels of consciousness. We create metaphoric realities that address social issues of feminine culture.

http://www.rpmproject.com/

2407-The House Inside My Head, 2011-2012

Seven segment video installation, 10 x 10 x 15 ft. house

Folding laundry is a repetitive and constant chore throughout the timeline of our lives. This multi-media installation transforms this domestic ritual from the mundane to the ethereal transforming thoughts that surface during these quiet moments into a meditational trance.

Presented as an iconic white house but with hair bursting from the attic vent, this installation is designed with a black box interior, inviting the viewer to experience a multi-sensory scenario. The seven segment video presents the ritual of folding laundry as an ethereal expression of the ordinary as layers of consciousness  bubble up to the surface in this universal act.

Too Busy for Vowels, Neon installation, 2016.

The House Inside My Head, multimedia installation, Boca Raton Museum of Art, 2016.

Clothesline, installation, 2013-ongoing.

The House Inside My Head, video stills.

CLOTHESLINE, 2016

anne marie was here..., 2013

Mixed media installation, monitors, table, dressed chairs

Inspired by an article written by Anne-Marie Slaughter, “Why Women Still Can’t Have it All”, RPM Project literally brings to the table the ongoing conversation between women and what they contend with when they juggle their personal and professional lives.

Presented in a domestic setting, a dining table is set with decadent cakes, dishes, teacups and six dressed chairs with video monitors as talking heads.  Each chair represents a woman and her choices, justifications and dilemmas concerning family and professional life. One chair is left empty for the viewer to sit and participate in this interactive aural collage.  An ipad replaces a plate setting, so that the guest can leave their own opinion in a virtual community.

Blue, 2016

Three-channel video installation

Since the 1950’s, prosperity and the rise of capitalism created a lifestyle of consumerism, where browsing and purchasing material things evolved into a consumer culture.  This popular ritual of shopping for a better life shaped our identity as a society.  Many artists reacted to this consumer driven way of life, revealing in their work that the relationship between shopper and material object is more of an obsession than pastime. There are visible strains of this complicated relationship in the commonly known genre, called Pop Art.

In this three-channel video, the art of consumption is examined through the main character in Blue.  She approaches her house anxious to open her newly purchased piece, and upon entering through the front door, the viewer also crosses the threshold of her psyche. Her environment suddenly shifts from ecstatic to ominous, and as she navigates through the maze of her interior, her world literally comes crashing down around her.  In her subsequent escape we place her in nature, appearing larger than life, alluding to second chances and what is innately meaningful in our humanness.

To join in the discussion link to: http://rpmproject.com/blog/