Pamela Rosenkranz

b. 1979, Uri, Switzerland. Lives and works in Zurich and Bern

Purity of Vapors, 2012
Silicone, pigments, 111 SmartWater bottles, fridge, 180 × 60 × 61 cm
Courtesy of the artist and Sprüth Magers

In Purity of Vapors plastic water bottles are presented as natural objects: positioned as beauty and wellness products that cleanse the body from within, bottles of water promise us eternal youth and natural purity, which have become commodities. Taking the feast of natural purity on supermarket shelves to the extreme, Pamela Rosenkranz fills empty water bottles with skin-toned silicone that looks like a homogenized solution of a body belonging, perhaps, not to a human but to a perfectly smooth barbie doll, empty on the inside.

Rosenkranz’s interest in synthesized scents and skin-toned pigments, as well as her use of commercial color names (Creamy Brown, Fresh Ebony, Milky Stay) mark her art as extremely nonorganic. In several works reminiscent of those by French artist Yves Klein, she seems to mock the idea of “natural” creative expression by producing expressionist paintings after ingesting Viagra. She is equally sceptical of lifestyle brands and their slogans, such as Fiji’s “Untouched by man,” Evian’s “The most important body of water is yours,” and ASICS’ “anima sana in corpore sano” ("a healthy soul in a healthy body"). Exploring the empty centers of history, politics, and contemporary culture, Rosenkranz invites the viewer to think of how our philosophical and scientific understanding of what is “natural” and “human” is changing in the epoch known as the Anthropocene.