Niels Trannois at CALM – Centre d’Art La Meute, Lausanne

Opening, Friday, February 07, 2025.
Exhibition from February 08 to April 04, 2025.
Opening according to Café du Loup opening hours, closed on Mondays. Guided tour by email reservation to calm.centreartlameute@gmail.com

 A proposal and text by Oriane Emery & Jean-Rodolphe Petter 

The 2024/2025 season at CALM – Centre d’Art La Meute continues with the presentation of work by Niels Trannois. This is his first solo exhibition in French-speaking Switzerland. Created specifically for the occasion, a series of new works accompany a new display of earlier works. In particular, he collaborated with British composer Lauren Duffus, who produced a mix specifically for the exhibition.

With the title of his exhibition, Niels Trannois pays tribute to the many exchanges, collaborations and encounters he has experienced between Paris, Berlin and Switzerland. Version Cue was the name of a program from the Adobe software company that was discontinued in 2009. Its main function was to keep file revisions up to date across multiple users. A non-verbal relationship with representation and an ode to the influences of loved ones near and far, who silently pass through us and make us up.

Version Cue evokes fragility and vulnerability. The artist’s own fragility, experienced and asserted as a strength. That of his work, where porcelain, for example, at once extremely solid and delicate, challenges us on its function as a support, engraved by laser, then painted with oil. Semantic, material and spatial juxtaposition are omnipresent in Niels Trannois’ work. With a particular attraction to the object of the poster, accessible, exchangeable, brittle and aesthetically powerful by virtue of its popular character, he has recently designed multi-faceted works integrated into Plexiglas boxes. He likes to use the metaphor of a fungus or virus growing energetically in a given space, adapting to its environment. These boxes, like the one at the corner, create a point of concentration. A painting emerges or is generated, playing with the public and the two- dimensionality of the painting exhibition.

Several birds are represented in the exhibition. Symbolically, they mean a great deal to the artist, both in terms of their vulnerability to the impact of human activity on nature and their majesty as represented in the history of canonical art. Niels Trannois is influenced by the gracefulness of certain gestures, postures and the fluidity of clothing. He interprets and uses images of femininity such as the contemporary warrior he celebrates. Several emblematic pairs of heels are represented (Rick Owens SS15 and Julian Hakes), objects of fulfillment, of empowerment, creating a tension with the artist’s work. Finally, two monumental silicone sculptures occupy the entrance and the back of the exhibition space. A poetic and sensitive hymn to the artist’s position in society, they reveal a multitude of points that question our place, our perspectives, our identities, as well as the world and its transformations.

Niels Trannois is an artist who, after living for many years in Berlin, is now based between Lausanne (CH) and Marseille (FR). His work has recently been shown at Villa du Parc (FR), Windhager Von Kaenel Gallery (CH), The Grotto – Quadrado Azul Gallery (Lisbon), CACY (CH), Kunsthalle Basel (CH), Center d’Art Contemporain (Geneva), MRAC (Serignan), SALTS (Basel), Institut Suisse de Rome (IT), Archivio Conz (Berlin), A Palazzo Gallery, (Brescia), Supportico Lopez (Berlin).

The artist would like to thank Lauren Duffus, Bastien Gachet, Elise Lammer, Astrit Ismaili, Sarah Scheder, as well as Oriane Emery & Jean-Rodolphe Petter for their participation in this project and their invaluable assistance.