Switzerland

Pamela Rosenkranz has been selected to create the exhibition at the Swiss Pavilion for the next Art Biennale in Venice. The choice was made by the biennials jury of the Swiss Arts Council Pro Helvetia.

Rosenkranz‘ work employs the internet-driven thinking of her generation. With a wide scope of references, ranging from politics, history, philosophy and technology to popculture, she translates complex issues into accessible sets of symbols, using a variety of shiny surfaces. Amongst other elements, Rosenkranz uses all kind of different mixtures of monochrome skin-colours for finger painting on high-tech materials, color schemes of global corporations, soft drinks and water bottles in her work. She confronts these products with their material reality and their synthetic appearance. With unexpected references to topics we encounter in the generated images and overabundant information of everyday life, Rosenkranz creates links that enable us to see things in an unexpectedly connected way while haunting and alienating us at the same time.

Pamela Rosenkranz‘s work takes aim at the empty centers of history, politics, and contemporary culture as a whole. It addresses the shifting philosophical and scientific meanings of the ‘natural’ and the ‘human’ during Anthropocene (the geological epoch marked by the impact of human activities on the ecosystem). Rosenkranz deploys a palette of patented icons—polyethylene water bottles, soft drinks, Ralph Lauren latex paint, JPEGs of International Klein Blue, Ilford photo paper, and ASICS sneakers—augmented by flesh-toned silicone and acrylic paint. Her insistence on the ‘naturalness’ of these seemingly unnatural materials is premised on the fact that they were all produced by human activity.

Pamela Rosenkranz was born in Uri, Switzerland in 1979. She received her MFA from the Academy of Fine Arts, Bern, in 2004, and completed an independent residency at the Rijksakademie in Amsterdam in 2012. She was recently nominated for the Böttcherstraße Prize, Kunsthalle Bremen, and in exhibitions at the Migros Museum für Gegenwartskunst (Zürich), the Kunsthalle Wien, the Astrup Fearnley Museet (Oslo), and the ICA London.