article
DAVID RENGGLI
Lara Konrad -David Renggli: Re-Examining the Real
www.collecteursmagazine.com

01.05.2018

Moments after we got on the phone, my broadly settled notions of David Renggli shifted. Better yet, they evolved; an unsurprising circumstance, of course, if considering whatever forms of virtual written interaction still always lack an essential human component: a tangible physicality that deliberately materializes the reflections and meanings of a stranger, whose face—especially thanks to Google images—you’d involuntarily recognize in public situations, yet not (ever) come to understand. Nonetheless, the predictable shift from email to phone seems noteworthy here; hearing and listening to an agreeably soft-spoken voice on the other line (and across the Atlantic), a reliable artifice begins to form around the artist’s practice and otherwise everyday observations. Still witnessing as an external viewer—just steadier, and maybe sometimes closer—Renggli pulsates with ideas that often end, yet not conclude, with a certain type of playfulness towards our contemporary ways of existing. Abstractions that reference the selfhood of a 21st century and beyond, become subtle impulses for the loss and gain of meaning, necessarily resulting in something purposeful. Or, at least temporarily permeable.