Rosa Rendl imbues gorgeous still life shots with conceptual ambivalence in her new show

Date
24 June 2014

We first posted about Rosa Rendl’s photography last year and with the shining report we gave back then it seems appropriate to revisit her work now that she’s holding her first solo exhibition, entitled HOW ALIVE ARE YOU, in Vienna. The exhibition “deals with notions of loneliness and the creeping feeling of emptiness disguised by online hyper-socialism and consumerism.” It’s a complex amalgamation of concepts, but one that’s dealt with neatly by Rosa’s photographs. A richly coloured, angular wooden background features a mobile phone, a packet of cigarettes and an advertising campaign for Jaguar cars in three different images, aligning the notion of consumerism with a sharp, polished finish and the sensuous colour palettes that seem to run throughout her portfolio.

Most impressively though, Rosa imbues seemingly dissonant still life images with an odd consistency; what she describes as “sobriety and emptiness” run parallel to connotations of luxury and connection in a tangled web of reference. Also they’re really gorgeous images, which is quite a net to fall back on if you’re not feeling conceptual, isn’t it?

HOW ALIVE ARE YOU will run until 27 June at Bar du Bois in Vienna.

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Rosa Rendl: HOW ALIVE ARE YOU

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Rosa Rendl: HOW ALIVE ARE YOU

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Rosa Rendl: HOW ALIVE ARE YOU

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Rosa Rendl: HOW ALIVE ARE YOU

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Rosa Rendl: HOW ALIVE ARE YOU

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Rosa Rendl: HOW ALIVE ARE YOU

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Maisie Skidmore

Maisie joined It’s Nice That fresh out of university in the summer of 2013 as an intern before joining full time as an Assistant Editor. Maisie left It’s Nice That in July 2015.

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