The unanticipated conjunction of a multiplicity of various everyday materials and motifs characterise the sculptural objects and spatial installations of David Renggli (born 1974). Renggli creates apparently known objects, which upon closer inspection frequently emerge to the observer as surreal, absurd grotesques because of their material composition or the combination of objects. The moment of surprise shapes the aesthetic principle which is a recurrent theme in Renggli’s work.
The exhibition contains sculptures that seem to use the technique of the readymade, even though all the works are imitations of objects that only seem to be what they are not. Two formaly very different series of pictures negotiate the state of painting. A series of collages, each of which consists of three original pages from catalogues in which the painting Fifteen sunflowers in a vase (van Gogh, 1888) was reproduced and which are supplemented - apparently quite unsuitably - with cut-outs from comic strips. The other series is made up of large pictures whose surface consists of soot. Both works have in common that they were created randomly. On the one side is the inflationary and uncontrolled copying of the original on the other side the original itself which refers to the endpoint of painting and which was generated randomly.
The work of David Renggli has been shown in numerous international exhibitions, including Tate Britain, Migros Museum, Zurich, Kunsthaus Zurich, Kunstraum Baden and Swiss Institute New York. David Renggli lives and works in Zürich and Texas.
