No Core

New monograph

For the past decade, Pamela Rosenkranz (*1979, Sils-Maria, lives in Berlin) has sought to collapse the meaning of the artwork into the meaninglessness of pure materiality. In challenging these conditions of art, she activates a contemporary form of nihilism. From paintings produced from the foil of emergency blankets or Ralph Lauren-branded latex paint and soft drinks, to plastic water bottles filled with skin- or urine-hued liquids, to a monitor featuring an approximation of and challenge to Yves Klein blue, Rosenkranz’s artworks take aim at the empty centers of history, politics, and our contemporary culture as a whole. Her adept engagement with the homogenous surfaces of our consumerist societies reveals them to be not just objects of desire but parts of a natural order. In so doing, and by unraveling mystified notions of art that has as its core the artist’s subjectivity, Rosenkranz incorporates questions about a “self” that insistently appears to be at the absolute center of cultural attention.

“No Core” is the first monograph on Rosenkranz’s increasingly celebrated oeuvre. Beautifully designed by Yvonne Quirmbach, the book features an overview of the work that Rosenkranz developed in three recent institutional solo exhibitions in Geneva, New York, and Braunschweig, Germany. The monograph, edited by Katya García-Antón, Gianni Jetzer, Quinn Latimer, and Hilke Wagner presents contributions by the art historian and writer Alex Kitnick and philosophers Robin Mackay and Reza Negarestani, alongside extensive visual documentation. Taken together, the compelling essays and images that comprise “No Core” offer profound insights into Rosenkranz’s unique work and thinking.

Published with the Centre d’art Contemporain Geneva, Swiss Institute Contemporary Art, New York and Kunstverein Braunschweig.