Courtesy the artist, Karma International, Sprüth Magers and Miguel Abreu Gallery]

The Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam presents Liquid Body, a solo exhibition by Swiss artist Pamela Rosenkranz, on view from May 21 to August 24, 2025. Known for her immersive environments, Rosenkranz transforms the museum into a charged sensory field, where the distinction between perception and matter dissolves, and light behaves as if it were thought itself. In a space bathed in a green and blue glow—suggestive of synthetic ecologies and unearthly atmospheres—painting exists not just as surface, but as a living system where presence and perception interact.

Rosenkranz’s work examines the biochemical and cultural forces that shape human experience. Using both synthetic and organic materials—such as polymers, LED lighting, and industrial plastics—she crafts multisensory environments designed to shift viewers’ perception. Her installations blur the boundaries between natural and artificial, exploring how evolution and contemporary technology shape our emotions, identities, and behaviors.

MATERIALITY AND PERCEPTION

Liquid Body presents, alongside a body of new work, a selection of Rosenkranz’s key pieces, highlighting her sustained engagement with sensory experience, synthetic materials, and transformation. Central to the exhibition is Our Product (2015), first unveiled at the Swiss Pavilion of the Venice Biennale. Featuring a 'pool' filled with pink liquid mimicking standardized skin tones, the work reveals how commercial narratives influence personal and collective identities. Her seminal Firm Being series—PET water bottles filled with silicone in varying flesh tones—continues this exploration of purity, embodiment, and the commodification of natural resources.

Alongside these, Rosenkranz’s paintings—executed on unconventional surfaces such as emergency blankets, plexiglass, mirrors, and synthetic skins—extend her investigation into the body’s interaction with the contemporary environment. These works enhance the immersive atmosphere while also serving as independent, tactile, gestural reflections on perception and presence. The exhibition further includes paintings inspired by Yves Klein’s Blue Monochromes, reframed through Rosenkranz’s biologically informed approach to color’s spiritual power. One of Klein’s original works from the museum’s collection will be presented in dialogue, emphasizing her materialist engagement with art history.

The exhibition becomes a living system — layers of transparency, reflective surfaces, and shifting digital imagery deepen the exhibition’s sensory impact and invite viewers to witness the ever-shifting boundaries of life and the unknowable forces that shape it.

ABOUT THE ARTIST

Pamela Rosenkranz (b. 1979, Altdorf, Switzerland) studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Bern and completed a residency at Amsterdam’s prestigious Rijksakademie. Her work has been exhibited internationally at institutions such as Centre Pompidou, MoMA, Kunsthalle Basel, and Kunsthaus Bregenz. In 2025, Rosenkranz received the distinguished Swiss Grand Award for Art / Prix Meret Oppenheim, affirming her influential position in contemporary art.

With Liquid Body, Rosenkranz offers visitors an immersive encounter with painting, perception, and the shifting boundaries between the body, technology, and nature.

[Text: Rein Wolfs]

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