Lois Renner (born October 11, 1961 in Salzburg) studied at the Mozarteum University in Salzburg and at the Düsseldorf Academy of Art with Gerhard Richter. Otto Mauer Award in 1992; 2001 Grand Prix for Art, Salzburg; 2002 International Prize for photography at the II. Art Biennale of Buenos Aires; Appointed professor of artistic photography at the Karlsruhe University of Arts and Design from 2001 to 2005. Lois Renner lives and works in Vienna and Salzburg.

Lois Renner is an Austrian painter working at the interface between painting and photography. Or to be a little more specific: he is a painter whose efforts to soften formal, often hierarchical boundaries enabled new “hybrid” ways of dealing with painting through photography. Fundamental to his interpretation of an image is a paradigmatic, looping reconstruction of his Viennese studio in which factical life experience and myth of an artist’s work and output is both celebrated and deconstructed. In this model of the studio, our usual knowledge about the world and of an object’s possible roles, in addition to its shape, size and position, is turned upside down—completely irrespective of whether one wants to refer to it as subject or object, model illusion or plausible reality. In his new images, a consortium of model props and decor offers a capacious mix of sculptural performance, of memories and myths about the female human body in art. Reflecting on the aesthetic and physical, emotional experience of love and beauty, of suffering and loss, these new series of images reference Renner’s interest in material fluidity, transformation and sculptural “mummification” of time, providing different perspectives on the transcendental movement of an artist’s inner-self and artistic preservation of all experienceswith human bodies. What first appealed to Lois about using plaster originals from body casts was the immediacy of it. As in his paintings, whether oil or watercolor, he has to work fast—it’s all about time, capturing time. The way he uses the fragility and physical presence of plaster sculpture on the stage of his studio model, the archaic idea of attributing cathartic presence to sculpture is drawn into a new “testing”—an examination not limited to the plaster bodies in the painterly space of his pictorial “flat-ware” but also to the processes of the images’ origins and their possible perception.

Solo exhibitions (selection): Galerie Jesco von Puttkamer, Berlin (1997); Salzburger Kunstverein (1995); Kunsthaus Bregenz (1998); Kuckei + Kuckei, Berlin (1999), Kunsthalle Göppingen (2000); Kerstin Engholm Galerie Wien (2002); Crown Gallery, Brüssel (2003); Galerie Rupert Pfab, Düsseldorf (2005); Galerie Mauroner, Vienna (2006); Kunstclub Hamburg (2012); “Blooming Worlds”, Galerie Mauroner Vienna (2013), Salzburg Museum (2017); “Painting of the 21st Century” Barlach Halle K Hamburg (2018); Galerie Deschler Berlin (2019).
Group exhibitions (selection): “Pittura Immedia, Malerei in den 90ern”, Neue Galerie am Landesmuseum Joanneum, Graz (1995); “Wunderbar”, Kunstverein Hamburg (1996); “Formalismus”, Österreichische Galerie Belvedere, Wien (1997); “La casa, il corpo, il cuore”, Museum moderne Kunst Stiftung Ludwig Wien, 20er Haus (1999); “Anteprima Bovisa. Milano- Europa 2000”, PAC-Padiglione d’Arte Contemporanea / Palazzo della Triennale, Mailand (2001); “Aller Anfang ist Merz”, Haus der Kunst, München, Sprengel Museum, Hannover (2000/2001); “Realidad Construida”, Galeria Helga de Alvear, Madrid (2001); Austrian Contemporary Art Exhibition, Shanghai Art Museum, Shanghai, China (2001); “True Fictions”, Ludwig Forum für internationale Kunst, Aachen (2002); “Made for Admont”, Museum Stift Admont, Admont (2003); “Why Pictures now?” Museum für Moderne Kunst Stiftung Ludwig, Vienna (2006); Sammlung Essl, Essl Museum Klosterneuburg (2007); Otto Mauer und seine Preisträger, Investkredit Bank AG, Vienna (2007); “Adolph Menzel und Lois Renner—Das Künstleratelier”, Hamburger Kunsthalle (2008); “Best of Austria”, Lentos Museum, Linz (2009); “Austria Hyper Real”, Museum Moderner Kunst, Stiftung Ludwig, Vienna (2010); “Alpine Desire”, Austrian Cultural Forum, New York (2011); “Juwelen im Rheingold”, Kunsthalle Düsseldorf (2012); “Mythos Atelier”, Staatsgalerie Stuttgart (2012); “De Sculptura”, Kunsthalle Salzburg Museum (2013); The Ploner Collection, Belvedere, Vienna (2015); “Other Spaces”, Bank Austria Kunstforum, Vienna (2017); The Essl Collection Albertina, Vienna (2021).

public and private art collections owning works by Lois Renner (selected)…