Renner, Lois

Lois Renner

Austrian, (born 1961- 2021)

About the Artist

Born in Salzburg in 1961, Renner studied at the Düsseldorfer Akademie in the mid ’80s. Beuys’ notion of soziale Plastik—the attempt to expand art into life and to think of society as a kind of sculpture—was still on many people’s minds. At the same time artists were experimenting with the built model as a medium: Harald Klingelhöller constructed his sculptures out of cardboard, a much-used material for models; Reinhard Mucha built architectural and exhibition models from pieces of furniture; Thomas Schütte peopled his models with little figures and began making his bricolage constructions. The main question the model builders posed was, What kinds of statements do models make as a category, with respect to issues of form? Renner, though clearly indebted to such predecessors, goes beyond the model as a self-sufficient medium. He begins by constructing a model of a real-life situation (in the shape of his former studio), but by minimizing its scale he explores his own ideas of soziale Plastik. His models are not about the representation of a recognizable situation, as might be expected; that’s only the starting point. They are about painting extended to include the field of real objects. If one attempts to trace the Testbilder back to the model, the autonomy of each, or the difference between them, becomes evident. The model presents a space full of fascinating details, down to the frame and construction; the photos create a space that can hardly be “spelled back” onto its model. The sum of Renner’s practice is a painting-oriented photographic look at a form of three-dimensional painting. www.artforum.com/features/openings-lois-renner-202305/

Works

Exhibitions

coming soon…