Lois Renner.

A description of Lois Renner's work sounds straightforward enough. The artist constructs wooden models, generally measuring around 60 by 70 inches, of his former Salzburg studio, places small familiar objects inside, and then photographs details of the set. The resulting photos are enlarged, often according to the exhibition space in which they appear (mostly around 80 by 110 inches); sometimes they're shown alongside the models, at other times alone. A first hint, though, that the work is more complex than this description allows comes with the name Renner gives his photographs - "Testbilder," that is, "test pictures." The term provides a clue as to Renner's influences and predecessors: Beuys and the Dusseldorf "model builders" of the mid '80s. But in contrast to these more sculpturally minded forebears, Renner insists on calling his works paintings. His paintings, however, do not involve oil and canvas; rather they reside in - and between - model and photograph. Renner's resistance to labeling his work otherwise is reflected in his request that his images appear without captions.

Born in Salzburg in 1961, Renner studied at the Dusseldorfer Akademie in the mid '80s. Beuys' notion of soziale Plastik - the attempt to expand art into life and to think of society as a kind of sculpture - was still on many people's minds. At the same time artists were experimenting with the built model as a medium: Harald Klingelholler constructed his sculptures out of cardboard, a much-used material for models; Reinhard Mucha built architectural and exhibition models from pieces of furniture; Thomas Schutte peopled his models with little figures and began making his brico-lage constructions. The main question the model builders posed was, What kinds of statements do models make as a category, with respect to issues of form? Renner, though clearly indebted to such predecessors, goes beyond the model as a self-sufficient medium. He begins by constructing a model of a real-life situation (in the shape of his former studio), but by minimizing its scale he explores his own ideas of soziale Plastik. His models are not about the representation of a recognizable situation, as might be expected; that's only the starting point. They are about painting extended to include the field of real objects. If one attempts to trace the Testbilder back to the model, the autonomy of each, or the difference between them, becomes evident. The model presents a space full of fascinating details, down to the frame and construction the photos create a space that can hardly be "spelled back" onto its model. The sum of Renner's practice is a painting-oriented photographic look at a form of three-dimensional painting.

All of Renner's models include constant features of the former studio - the staircase that leads out from it, the windows in the background, the tilt of the roof - while details of construction and the interior vary. Any object that might be found around a painter's studio, whether tools, chairs, and tables; easels; or even a pinball machine, is liable to turn up at scale in the models, often constructed by the artist himself. Until recently Renner also included "life-size" objects, like a lighter or a hand mirror, playing on the differences between scale as well as those between functional items and invented forms (and giving rise to little surprises of dislocation by the viewer when these initially unrecognizable props are finally perceived clearly in the photos). In his new images, the game of "translating" back from photo to model has lost its hold; the models have become a site strictly reserved for wild architectural shapes as well as miniature, admittedly unmistakable objects (such as furniture). These items now function more explicitly as measuring rods that indicate the framing of the model (the studio space), and they draw Renner's diminutive inventions into a reciprocal "testing" - an examination not limited to the objects themselves but also to the processes of the images' origins and their conventional perception.

Among those who have written on Renner's work, much has been made of the fact that the models are mini stagings of a painter's studio. This consideration obscures the fact that the artist is not content with a Conceptual simulation, Renner looks for a way to pose questions about painting's genesis in the studio and about the perception of the result without recourse to anachronistic forms of painterly production. In the objects he makes for the models, the models themselves, and what Renner calls the Flachware ("flat-ware"), another term he uses to refer to his photographs, he produces a painterly space. (Shortly after constructing the model he stops working in terms of architectural space and adds colors and shapes simply in terms of pictorial composition.) Since Renner's work is not done with a brush, painting finds a model-like expression - one in which the process of creating an image is freed from the limitations of the medium itself. The photos are generally displayed sandwiched in acrylic glass plates, perhaps reflecting less a merely technical decision than one that achieves something like the congealing of a once-attained situation.

"Form research," Renner's own shorthand for his work, is an apt moniker: Renner's goal is to disallow equations between image and descriptive language. What do you see when you look at one of his photographs: a photo, a studio, a model, a painting, or photographed real objects? What is represented? The studio rebuilt becomes a canvas because Renner starts painting inside and outside the architectural space and adds strange shapes to it, but all with the goal of producing a photographic, flat view. It's such a mixture of elements that language can't adequately keep up - and that's exactly what Renner intends.

Sabine B. Vogel is a frequent contributor to Artforum.