Jessy Razafimandimby and Niels Trannois at Espace Témoin

Artists: Jessy Razafimandimby and Niels Trannois

Exhibition title: Favrile Figures (LCT in Presentia)

Curated by: Aurelien Martin

Organized by: La Vraie Vie

Venue: Space Témoin, Geneva, Switzerland

Date: June 4 – 25, 2021

Photography: all images copyright and courtesy of the artists, photos: © Julien Gremaud for La Vraie Vie

Organized by ”La Vraie Vie” hosted for its 2020-2021 programming at Space Témoin, within the GUS workshops in Geneva, Favrile Figures (LCT in presentia) is a project conceived and realized during a collaboration between artists Jessy Razafimandimby and Niels Trannois.

Recalibrating the parameters of the duo show, the artists decided to mix their practices from the genesis of the exhibition by freely associating their sources of references, formal language, and conceptual strategies to the point of renouncing, during the time of the collaboration, to the founding notion of the individual-artist.

Thus, the artists have allowed the emergence of another individuality, that of a two-headed avatar whose coherence of works is the fruit of a renunciation as much as of an enrichment anchored in reciprocity. Through works, mostly conceived with four hands, Favrile Figures (LCT in presentia) brings together notions that originate in aspects of the Arts and Crafts movement. As its name suggests, this movement, which began in late 19th century England, aimed to reconcile fine arts and crafts, in order to dismantle the hierarchical organization of aesthetic and moral values embedded in a bourgeois and elitist social system. Both attached to the notion of handwork as a discipline of the everyday, Trannois and Razafimandimby also share an interest in the role of ornament in painting, a notion that, when associated with the concept of decoration, has become a marker, since the 19th century and still today, of good or bad taste.

Thus, in Favrile Figures (LCT in presentia), the creatures and characters of a fictional world are brought together, initiating the desire for a new organization and valuation of what “makes art”, that of a universe where vulnerability and collectivity are guideline of their artistic creation.

-Elise Lammer