Rosa Rendl
Colour Charts
“Ocean Drops” and “Homecoming” are patent shades of nail polish. “Steinblaue Schönheit” (an “eggshell blue”) or “Zauber der Wüste” (a “delicate sand beige”), the muted tones brushed across domestic interiors. The colour tints of cosmetics lace each denomination of a product with its own poetic promise of value whilst textiles and yarns are often differentiated according to sober numerical colour codes. Colours represent an integral feature of a product, marking not only a spectral differentiation, but a powerful visual symbol, that opens up associative pathways between aesthetic taste and lifestyle.
Colour charts, fans and product samples present emotionally charged colour worlds, that communicate a spectrum of significations that can be coalesce in a product that remains the same. As partial surrogate for the product in question, a colour chart stands for a postponed desire, that highlights a preliminary stage of actual consumption. Where sameness prevails, it promises indivualisation, where pre-selection reduces the offer, it suggests limitless choice and diversifies the repertoire of the possible. It epitomises a world that increasingly emphasises individualisation, however all standardized through the ever-progressing currents of globalisation.
Rosa Rendl has collected exemplary colour charts and product samples dating from 1960 to the present day. Her photographs exhibit them as if they were products for a catalogue. These photographs are documentations, recalling repro-photography - factual reproductions of objects in which the camera seems to refrain from any interpretive perspective. The formal orientation and seemingly renunciation of any narrative, accentuates the process of translation of the object into the two-dimensional photographic space, its the abstract creation of the image. The rich hues conveyed by the textile samples, fans and sample images are largely presented in geometric grids.
Dominant in these shots, typical of classical studio photography, is the cool white background – evoking a neutrality that almost bureaucratises the individuality and extravagance. In particular, the rupture between the indulgences of colour and the photographically defined suspension, characterises the seemingly prosaic photographs. The works present absent products in the state of their potential, void of conventional commercial form. Desire realised through them, is captured in a state of suspension, from which a sense of possibility emanates from the work. At the same time, this contained potential, creates a certain melancholy. Nonetheless, the works celebrate a central fundament of photography - colour, as it intricately weaves new realms of possibility, detached from the ramifications and limitations of concrete materiality.
The laconic staging of objects to appear cool or indifferent is typical of Rosa Rendl’s photography. At once drawn in by the pleasure derived from such aesthetic severity, yet left despondent by its clinical dispassion, we are caught somehow in a state of abject fulfilment. As a designer of swimwear, Rendl has dealt intensively with fashion photography, simultaneously appropriating and sublimating the viewership, our gaze, of the product. Materialities and textures feature strongly in her photographic work, however such latently seductive qualities are deliberately muted, slowed down and conceptually superimposed. And yet they are never drowned out - when these alluring attributes of the object seem to be in diffusion, they are at once regrouped and intensified by the force of the opposing elements in rupture. The opulence of the colours, like the sumptuous imagery within a poem, produce a connotative excess that sweeps over the more visual elements of the image. That woos, bewitches and charms them, until colour and word begin to form something altogether new, a something altogether deeply affecting.
Vanessa Joan Müller Translated by Georg Kargl Fine Arts
Biography
born 1983 in Baden, lives and works in Vienna
Solo and Duo Exhibitions
2023
UNWORD/REJECTION (with Ketty La Rocca), MLZ Art Dept, Triest
2022
Colour Charts, Georg Kargl BOX, Vienna
2019
Rejection, Kunstraum Weikendorf, Weikendorf Kartell, Georg Kargl BOX, Vienna
2018
Opportunity Lover, Kunstwerke - Institute for Contemporary Art, Bob´s Pogo Bar, Berlin
Vilgefortis, Lonely Boys and Battle-Ax, Cordova, Barcelona
2017
Playing, Gillmeier Rech, Berlin Concerts of Coreality, Lonely Boys, Sandy Brown, Berlin
2016
Holy and Repulsive, Lucas Hirsch, Düsseldorf
2015
What You Desire, Belvedere21, Vienna
2014
How Alive Are You, Bar Du Bois, Vienna
Selected Group Exhibitions
2024
You You, curated by Kate Sutton, Lombardi—Kargl, Wien
Body at Play, Georg Kargl BOX, Vienna
2022
Tipsy Tina, Kunsthalle Exnergasse, Vienna
2021
Posters by artist bands, Fluc, Vienna
GEORG KARGL EDITIONS, Georg Kargl Permanent, Vienna
Stay Brief, and Leave, Fondation Pernod Ricard, Paris
2020
Would You Be Available…, Georg Kargl Permanent, Vienna
Soft View / Privatissime, Neuer Essener Kunstverein, Essen
Attempt at Rapprochement, Georg Kargl Fine Arts, Vienna
The Shop, Georg Kargl Permanent, Vienna
2019
On the New - Young Scenes in Vienna, Belvedere21, Vienna
On the New, Kunstraum Innsbruck, Innsbruck
Performance by Appointment, Georg Kargl Fine Arts, Vienna
Lonely Boys performance, Fri-Art, Kunsthalle Fribourg, Fribourg
Sketch I, Halle für Kunst Lüneburg, Lüneburg
DAMA Project, Lonely Boys Performance, Torino
2018
Lonely Boys performance at Roter Salon, Volksbühne, Berlin
Culture Wear, Space31, Berlin
Sunglasses, Sundogs, Paris
2017
Aaahhh!!!, Lonely Boys performance, Paris International, Paris
Selfie Mania, Gebert Stiftung, Rapperswil
Ritual, Lambdalambdalambda, Prishtina
A night for lonely boys, Kunstwerke - Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin
In Awe, Kunsthalle Exnergasse, Vienna
Floating Self, Salzburger Kunstverein, Salzburg
Der Verdienst, 2014-2017, The Oracle, Berlin
How far to open up?, Forum Stadtpark, Graz
2016
The Language of things, Belvedere21, Vienna
Dreaming Dictionary, Skulpturinstitut, Vienna
Boil the Ocean, Bodega, New York
Humble Habits Domestic Monuments, HHDM, New York
2015
White SLR, New Bretagne Belle Air, Essen
BOYS, Lonely Boys performance, Halle für Kunst, Lüneburg
NEW NEEDS, Haus Wittmann by Johannes Spalt, Etsdorf/Kamp
Time to Fill up the Glass, Galerie Crone, Berlin
Lonely Boys performance, Künstlerhaus Halle für Kunst und Medien, Graz
2014 Let’s Mingle, Franz Josefs Kai 3, Vienna
Pcnc_Bay XII, Ve.sch, Vienna
Curatorial
2020
The Shop, Georg Kargl Permanent, Vienna
2016
F-Holes, Humble Habits Domestic Monuments, co-organized with HHDM, New York
2015
New Needs, co-curated with Isabella Ritter, Haus Wittmann by Johannes Spalt, Etsdorf/Kamp
Grants / Residencies
2022
State Scholarship for artistic photography, Austria
2016
Recognition Award for Fine Arts, City of Baden
2016
Artist Residency, New York
2012
Artist Residency, Cité des Arts, Paris
2010
Unit-F Editorial Award
Start Scholarship for artistic photography, Austria
Projects
since 2010 LONELY BOYS - performance duo with Daphne Ahlers
since 2013 RENDL – swimwear label
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