David Renggli

Leihgabe ans Nichts

October 22 – December 3 2006

The installations and photographs from Swiss artist David Renggli (b. 1974, lives and works in Zurich) are remarkable for being highly irritable whilst at the same time being very plausible. Describing with words a chair turned upside down with a pair of pumps propped on two of the chair's legs does not sound very dramatic; as an image it gains an incredible and highly narrative potential.
All the works selected for this show examine the visual and cognitive apparatus of human perception. Universal phenomena's appear through-out Renggli's objects, resulting in the fact that human perception as we know it, is as important within the ever changing range of things that mankind is confronted with in the world. Provided with a complex mechanical device, one of Renggli's main objects produces an effect that looks like a jump in visual perception; it is as if several frames of a film are missing or have been taken out. As a result of the digital revolution, nowadays this effect is applicable within a few seconds and without any effort; in this case, Renggli does it the other way and re-stages the same effect mechanically. Compared to the shortcut command in a video editing programme, his effort to produce this artwork is hilarious. But whereas the user of the computer has no idea of what is going on in his machine, the spectator of Renggli's work can easily understand the mechanical construction that leads to the effect. Renggli reconstructs a media illusion with mechanical means in doing so he de-constructs it at the same time; being a hard mechanical fact the illusion has turned into reality.

Oliver Kielmayer