I almost forgot that ASICS means Anima Sana in Corpore Sano (Underneath)
20102 ASICS sneakers, plaster, and silicone22 x 32 x 12 cmI almost forgot that ASICS means Anima Sana in Corpore Sano (2010, illus. p. 160) was created by appropriating a much coveted, instantly recognizable branded lifestyle product: a pair of ASICS sneakers in the size normally worn by Pamela Rosenkranz herself. What attracts our notice, therefore, is not so much the work of art per se as the footwear. After all, the look of products, their distinctive surface textures, and the social significance of brands are a central theme of contemporary art—which perhaps explains why it is sometimes confused with lifestyle. One subject of interest to Rosenkranz is the body: the biological body of a human being and the body as mediated by a work of art. In her younger years, she created works by folding paper—sheets of black paper or posters of sunsets—and then trickling black India ink into the creases. Those uneven surfaces thus became a medium in their own right and a support for a second surface. Rosenkranz also spent several years engaging with the French artist Yves Klein (1928–1962), both the man and his works, seeing in his art the notion of immaterial space going hand in hand with the selfdestructive plundering of the artist’s own body. Klein famously developed a blue pigment that he had patented as International Klein Blue (IKB). In Rosenkranz’s work, IKB returns as a crude, technically reproduced surface, which she then overlays with a transparent film that adheres to it like wrinkled and blistered skin. Whereas for Klein, blue symbolized immaterial space, Rosenkranz associates it with death. Even fitness and sport, which could indeed promote recreation, relaxation, and regeneration, and at the very least should signal a certain respect for one’s own body, are read as symptomatic of an age that is interested first and foremost in perfect surfaces that lend themselves to mediation as such. Hence the importance to the artist of skin. Looking more closely at the sneakers, we notice that they each contain a skin-colored mass that is not quite flat enough to be an insole, but is rather a kind of residual body. I almost forgot that ASICS means Anima Sana in Corpore Sano tells of how the body and its needs are being outshone and actually negated by a cult of the body, which worships products that effectively enlist the body in their service.
Roman Kurzmeyer
