“We shall not have succeeded in demolishing everything unless we demolish the ruins as well. But I can see no other way of doing that than by erecting some fine, well-proportioned buildings.” Ubu - Alfred Jarry

The absurd and the decadent, the impossible and the pataphysical, the science of imaginary solutions, of parallel universes, all drive the engine in Paul Renner’s art cosmos, and also shapes gallerist Philipp Konzett’s working method.

From the process of “work in progress,” the concept for the exhibition Hornstrumpot was and is being created in close cooperation between the artist and gallerist. The starting point was their passion for collecting fine art and tribal art, as well as their bibliophilia, which culminates in the formal framework of a library. In the individual elements with titles such as The Hell Fire Touring & Dining Club – an ongoing project that has been an integral factor in the artist’s work for years – or, The Pantheon of Pataphysicsin which tribal art objects are combined with works of Art Brut, autographs, books, artists’ editions and originals by the artist and friends and fellow artists such as Günter Brus or Joseph Beuys, gather to form a “library of obsessions.”

Renner attaches no importance to scientific knowledge, but rather to absurd symbioses such as Beuys’s Capri Batterie– the famous yellow light bulb which generates its luminous energy from the stored sunlight in a ripe lemon and serves as a pataphysical prime example.

 One of the central works in the arrangement and a library in itself is Hell Fire Touring Club. The founding members of this club, Medlar Lucan, Durian Gray and Paul Renner, set out on a “pilgrimage” through Europe in 2001 and discovered a “schizo-geographical realm, a secret cultural history and a new map of the human body” in 19 stations, which thickened and condensed into the same number of unique works by Paul Renner, as well as texts by the decadent chefs and gardeners Lucan and Gray.

With this exhibition, Paul Renner gives us a multifaceted, very personal look into a complex web of historical models of literature, cuisine, art and architecture, the dandies and the freaks who inspire him to his synesthetic works. 

Silke Eggl, Juli 2021

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PROGRAM

15 | 22 | 29 July

THURSDAY TOURS

6 PM

Philipp Konzett and Paul Renner guide through the exhibition

*

24 September

LECTURE

7 PM

Christoph König, readings from Nietzsche’s “Dionysos-Dithyramben”