Pamela Rosenkranz and Nikolas Gambaroff

Pamela Rosenkranz and Nikolas Gambaroff
This Is Not My Color / The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People
Curated by Gianni Jetzer
September 15–October 30, 2011

Opening:
Wednesday, September 14, 2011, 6 to 8PMNew address!
18 Wooster Street
New York, NY 10013
www.swissinstitute.net

Gallery Hours:
Wednesday–Sunday, 12–6 PM
Subway / N / R / Q / 6 to Canal Street

Acclaimed for their respective critical approaches to artistic production, both Pamela Rosenkranz and Nikolas Gambaroff make work across a wide range of media, including painting, sculpture, and single-channel video. The Swiss Institute / Contemporary Art devotes its inaugural exhibition at 18 Wooster Street to the artists’ first major New York institutional show, This Is Not My Color / The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People. This exhibition will include a selection of recent work by the artists in a variety of scales. Curated by Gianni Jetzer, the Swiss Institute’s Director, the exhibition remains on view from September 15 through October 30, 2011.

This Is Not My Color / The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People features paintings, assemblage, sculptures, and single-channel videos. The multimedia installation addresses the loftier concept of the human self in bodily and conceptual manifestations. The title of the exhibition suggests two diverging but overlapping artistic approaches: the first, a scientific and chemical analysis of the self and a disavowal; the second, a constructed and systematic operating procedure. While none of the work in the exhibition actually presents the human figure, the size, proportion, and posture of the works reflect a common concern for the bodily. The work of both artists reflects a strategy that borrows from and critiques a consumer industry that sells an idealized self—one which can be attained through the purchase of commodities, from self help books to luxury water.

The centerpiece of the exhibition is the idea that the made-for-purchase person is an illusory construct, one that can be unpacked through scientific, philosophical, and psychological analyses.

Also on view is Books on Books, curated by Christoph Schifferli, with publications by Rodney Graham, Barbara Bloom, Olaf Nicolai, Nina Beier and Marie Lund, Mariana Castillo Deball, Alejandro Cesarco, Continuous Project, Jonathan Monk, Rosalind Nashashibi, Derek Sullivan, Pierre Leguillon, Paul Chan, Melissa Dubbin / Aaron S. Davidson, Dani Gal, Dora Garcia, Wade Guyton, Nick Mauss, Michael Riedel, Allora & Calzadilla, Darren Bader, Pablo Bronstein, Maria Eichhorn, Sherrie Levine, Allan Ruppersberg, Oscar Tuazon, Ian Wallace, et al.

The Swiss Institute has grown from a showcase of Swiss art and artists for a mostly Swiss audience, into an innovative international venue for art that provides a significant forum for cultural dialogue between Switzerland, Europe, and the United States. This unique angle fosters the interaction between the Swiss and the many other communities and nationalities found in New York City. The result is a distinctive view of art and a way of thinking which asks audiences to break with traditional assumptions about art and national stereotypes.

*Image above:
Courtesy Miguel Abreu Gallery, New York and Karma International, Zurich.