25% Painting

The Swiss artist David Renggli, a child of postmodernism, weaves popular culture and art historical topoi into his work with a playful ease, molding it into a homogenous whole.  The origins of this book lie in Renggli’s exhibition The Charm of Ignorance(2013) that was shown in Museum Bellpark in Kriens.  Renggli mounted almost two thousand pictures in a rigid “St. Petersburg hanging. ” The collages, incorporating images from fashion and porn magazines, art catalogues and discovered photographs, interlace opposites. The observer loses himself in the presentation and falls into a trance-like state; a celebration of the artistic act, which through creative acceleration (the artist spends about three minutes on a single picture) produces a huge amount of single works.  At first glance they appear familiar. Only under more careful observation do they reveal their surreal grotesque absurdity. Surprise moments and repetition as an aesthetic principle are returning themes in Renggli’s work and lead to a magnificent state of ambivalence which connects us with the either/or sides of a problem. 25% Painting is a collection of approx. 500 of the original approx. 2000 collages that were repeatedly and arbitrarily re-arranged during the printing process, making each book its own unique work of art. David Renggli (b. 1974), Swiss artist and musician, lives and works in Zurich and Texas.

The Swiss artist David Renggli, a child of postmodernism, weaves popular culture and art historical topoi into his work with a playful ease, molding it into a homogenous whole.  The origins of this book lie in Renggli’s exhibition The Charm of Ignorance(2013) that was shown in Museum Bellpark in Kriens.  Renggli mounted almost two thousand pictures in a rigid “St. Petersburg hanging. ” The collages, incorporating images from fashion and porn magazines, art catalogues and discovered photographs, interlace opposites. The observer loses himself in the presentation and falls into a trance-like state; a celebration of the artistic act, which through creative acceleration (the artist spends about three minutes on a single picture) produces a huge amount of single works.  At first glance they appear familiar. Only under more careful observation do they reveal their surreal grotesque absurdity. Surprise moments and repetition as an aesthetic principle are returning themes in Renggli’s work and lead to a magnificent state of ambivalence which connects us with the either/or sides of a problem. 25% Painting is a collection of approx. 500 of the original approx. 2000 collages that were repeatedly and arbitrarily re-arranged during the printing process, making each book its own unique work of art. David Renggli (b. 1974), Swiss artist and musician, lives and works in Zurich and Texas.