01 Dec 2010

Ján Mančuška and Pamela Rosenkranz at Kunstverein Braunschweig

Villa Salve Hospes
J�?N MANČUŠKA
AGAINST INTERPRETATION
December 4, 2010–February 20, 2011

From December 4, 2010, to February 20, 2011, the Kunstverein Braunschweig is presenting the internationally renowned artist Ján Mančuška (*1972 in Bratislava, lives in Berlin and Prague) at the Haus Salve Hospes. Mančuška made a name for himself through his participation in numerous group exhibitions, for example at MoMA in New York, at ZKM Karlsruhe, at MUMOK in Vienna, or at the Tel Aviv Art Museum. In addition, Mančuška represented the Czech Republic at the 51st Biennale in Venice in 2005. Following a comprehensive presentation of his works at the Kunsthalle Basel (2008), the show at the Kunstverein Braunschweig represents his first institutional solo exhibition in Germany.

In the exhibition Against Interpretation, Ján Mančuška not lastly deals with the mechanisms of perception and understanding. By means of different interventions in the space and employing individual texts, images, and films, he succeeds in forcing open the space-time structure over and over. The individual installations in the space act as a sequence of settings that make reference to each other, and the artist incorporates the viewer's movements into the exhibition in a nearly choreographic way. The film Lost Memory (Postcatastrophic Story) is presented as a deconstructed narration distributed throughout the ground floor of the Kunstverein. It rests on the viewer to reconstruct the fragmented story line, who is his or her quest for meaning has to leave the familiar linear path through the exhibition in order to move back and forth between the film fragments. The perception of Mančuška's works is therefore strongly influenced by how the individual viewer behaves in the space and toward the work. While I walked reveals this approach in its tautology: it consists of a rubber strap bearing words that has been stretched back and forth from wall to wall at eye level. The printed text in turn describes the viewer's own movement through the space as he or she reads it. Other installations and films also examine forms of narration in relation to space and its structure. Mančuška often makes dramaturgical reference to the venue's architecture. At the Kunstverein, the artist carries this approach to the extremes by duplicating the layout of the Villa Salve Hospes with the aid of wall fixtures in order to shift it several meters to the west, virtually rearranging the space.

A comprehensive catalogue (German/English) is being published in conjunction with the exhibition.


Remise
PAMELA ROSENKRANZ
UNTOUCHED BY MAN
December 4, 2010–February 20, 2011

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 Firm Being 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.


Villa Salve Hospes (upper floor)
SPECIAL ANNUAL EDITIONS 2010/2011
December 4, 2010–February 20, 2011

With works by Björn Braun, Matti Braun, Christoph Dettmeier, Tim Eitel, Andrea Faciu, Caroline Hake, Toulu Hassani, Uwe Henneken, Jan Mančuška, Inka Nowoitnick, Bernd Ribbeck, Evariste Richer, Lea Rochus, Pamela Rosenkranz, Julia Schmidt, Jochen Schmith, Nedko Solakov, Javier Téllez, Amelie von Wulffen, Haegue Yang, et al.