Opening: 2 November 2013, 6-9 p.m.
Exhibition: 5 November 2013 – 14 January 2014
Wentrup Gallery
Tempelhofer Ufer 22
10963 Berlin
http://www.wentrupgallery.com/
David Renggli’s exhibition is characterised by an obsessive act of intervention; he stages his works in the exhibition space literally as an all-over. He mounts almost a thousand paintings in a rigorous salon hang, which occupies the gallery walls from floor to ceiling. Renggli’s act of occupation transforms the gallery into something completely different, possibly a cabinet of curiosities, or a kind of Amber Room of contemporary art. This intervention goes well beyond the usual scope of things, and indeed tests the limits of what is possible. The sheer amount of pictures also overstrains the beholder’s habits of seeing. This opulent all-over taxes our capacity to take it in. One really doesn’t know what is happening. The beholder gets lost in the viewing, and is transformed into a state that one might describe as a trance or perhaps even almost a kind of brainwashing. This staging is a celebration of the creative act which in a creative acceleration produces countless single works, all of which meet the high standards of being unique – with the difference, however, that next to each work of art we find around two thousand comparable ones. The inflationary production of unique works of art is naturally threatened by the principle of deflation, and the devaluation of both the individual picture and of the creative act. In this way David Renggli once again leads us into this wonderful state of ambivalence that connects us to both sides of a problem that remains unsolvable.
(Text: Hilar Stadler, Director, Museum im Bellpark, Kriens, Translation: Wilhelm Werthern)