David Renggli

Born in Zurich in 1974, David Renggli is a Swiss contemporary artist renowned for his transdisciplinary approach, blending contemporary sculpture, installation, photography, collage , reverse glass painting, and conceptual art . A prominent figure in the Swiss art scene since the early 2000s, he lives and works in Zurich, where he develops a body of work grounded in humor, poetry, the absurd, and the questioning of systems of representation.

After attending the Vorkurs at the Zurich University of the Arts, David Renggli studied photography at the Gerrit Rietveld Academie in Amsterdam between 1992 and 1997. Upon returning to Switzerland, he participated in several musical projects and founded the Waldorf performance and creation collective with friends, before gradually establishing his personal artistic practice.

David Renggli's world is characterized by an unexpected use of everyday materials, which he assembles into deliberately unstable, ambiguous, and poetic compositions. His works frequently combine found objects, metal, glass, wood, neon lights, straw, photographs, and images from popular culture or fashion magazines. This hybridization fuels a reflection on the construction of perception, the loss of meaning in an image-saturated society, and the mechanisms of contemporary desire. His work also maintains a constant dialogue with art history, postmodernism , surrealism , as well as with the notions of simulacrum and trompe-l'œil.

The artist champions an aesthetic of incongruity where surprise is a fundamental principle. His sculptures, installations, and paintings often appear precarious or accidental, yet they result from a rigorous mastery of formal balance. Between humor, melancholy, and social critique, David Renggli deliberately blurs the lines between truth and falsehood, industrial and sacred objects, popular culture and scholarly references.

His career has been marked by several major awards, including the UBS Young Art Award in 2006 and the Swiss Art Award in 2007 and 2011. These awards have confirmed his status as an essential player in contemporary Swiss art.

Among his major solo exhibitions are his presentation at the Kunsthalle Winterthur in 2006, L'ivresse au cognac at the Galerie Chez Valentin in Paris in 2008, Point of You in the same gallery in 2012, The Charm of Ignorance at the Museum Bellpark in Kriens in 2012, Scaramouche at the Kunst Halle Sankt Gallen in 2013, and Jahrmarkt der Gefühle at the Kunst(Zeug)Haus in Rapperswil-Jona in 2023.

His works have also been featured in numerous international group exhibitions at the Kunsthaus Zürich, the Fri Art Kunsthalle Fribourg, the Institut d'Art Contemporain de Villeurbanne, Salon 94 in New York, and the Swiss Cultural Center in Paris. Through a free and experimental practice, David Renggli continues to explore the relationships between contemporary art, visual culture, language, illusion, and the collective imagination, creating a unique body of work where spectacle, poetry, and a critique of the contemporary world converge.