The title of the exhibition by the Swiss artist Pamela Rosenkranz (*1979, lives in Zurich), which is being presented from December 4, 2010, to February 4, 2011, at the Remise of the Kunstverein Braunschweig, was borrowed from a Fiji Water advertising slogan. The mineral water is bottled on the Fiji Islands in a production method that prevents it from coming into contact with the atmosphere. Until the bottle is opened, the pure water from deep under the earth remains Untouched by Man. Although the production of the bottles—in order to preserve the purity of the water—is incompatible with contemporary ecology, the product sells: it has come to symbolize both naturalness and vitality and in doing so stands for the lifestyle of an individualized culture. The Fiji Water brand thus combines two opposing factors: the domestication of naturalness in a capitalist economy and demystification by the sciences.

As a symbol of this chasm, Pamela Rosenkranz apparently casually places bottles of mineral water in the spaces of the Remise. They have been filled with a pink or beige-brownish liquid, both irritating as well as daunting, resembling the facets of the color of human skin. Rosenkranz calls her objects FirmBeing and shifts their meaning. The image and the slogans that companies impose on their products by means of clever marketing strategies become meaningless.

Voluminous casts of crystals consume the Remise’s large space. They correspond with the shape of a broken healing stone. Casts of the artist’s throats, so-called Mouthfeels, have also been distributed throughout the space and speak, in their clarity and arrangement, of the wish for inner purity by ingesting minerals. They address, so to speak, the ambivalence of the human desire to be able to remedy the troubled relationship between humankind and nature.

Pamela Rosenkranz is one of the most interesting representatives of a scene of young artists who work conceptually. Following her participation in important exhibitions such as the 5th Berlin Biennale or Manifesta 7 and her solo exhibition at the Kunsthalle in Geneva or at the Swiss Institute in Venice, her works are now being presented for the first time in an institutional solo exhibition in Germany. A comprehensive bilingual catalogue is being published in conjunction with the exhibition in cooperation with the Centre d’Art Contemporain in Geneva and the Swiss Institute in New York.

Download floor plan (german)