Volker Renner

The series and the collection are the basic registers of Volker Renner’s creative practice. The individual photograph is always a module in a larger visual syntax; each motif, a clue that contributes to a shared narrative. Renner’s works contemplate the margins of entertainment, the blurry edges of the trivial, and the irritations of simulated genuineness, extending the arc traced by Renner’s earlier projects, which unfurl a panorama of illusions and aspirations, from the Eurovision Song Contest to Las Vegas and Columbo, from dime novels to Jackson Pollock. Not coincidentally, the photobook is Renner’s preferred format—each series is gathered in a meticulously designed publication, an album of intimate wonderment.

After studying applied cultural studies in Lüneburg, Volker Renner (b. 1977) enrolled at the University of Fine Arts Hamburg to obtain a degree in visual communication and rounded out his education in Peter Piller’s master class at the Academy of Fine Arts Leipzig.