Niels Trannois at Supportico Lopez

Artist: Niels Trannois

Exhibition title: K. J. (lethal psy ritual)

Venue: Supportico Lopez, Berlin, Germany

Date: January 27 – February 25, 2017

Photography: Nick Ash, all images copyright and courtesy the artist and Supportico Lopez, Berlin

“…K.J.’s memory slowly collapsed, as if souvenirs were dots that he just couldn’t join anymore. He was unable to dispatch them correctly on a temporal line since something broke in his left cortex and the disease evolved. Hell Zimmer, he used to call it.”

K.J. as a character:
(Lethal psy ritual) as a mental projection of what’s left in his brain blasted by Alzheimers. Flashes of memory, images that become anchors, anchors that become fetishes that he turns around. He scans a sculpture, engraving each of its parcels and details on the flaps of his grey matter. The mental projection he gets from this process is never clear, even though he pretends it is. He just jumps from one story to another as if things were connected upon the vault of his skull against a straightforward chronology.
K.J. as a character, as a disease, melting into each other in a city. He tries to map in the light of his latest anchor, burning once again the immediacy of the plan on paper, but this time it doesn’t work. The first image that came into his mind was a grid with powdery grey gaps and icy white extents. Then, in a Sisyphean way, the instant anchor is being set on tiles. From W.S.B., “the sky is thin as paper here,” or the paper as the surface where the image ends, only to be revealed as a projection. If you shoot the paper, you’ll see another cord through the hole, a crude world.
One can’t burn tiles twice. Their white is already the culmination of what can be burned. One can’t shoot it either or it will just break. K.J. knows those things. The city he melted burnt its own public sphere by selling them parcels after parcels: the off-spaces, the clubs, the temporary restaurants, etc. Those undefined and ephemeral spaces that K.J. used to wander in are now infected with a purposeful Alzheimers, as the city rarefies them consciously. The tiles are thin as paper here.

Tiles are literal formalisations of what impermanence is, a material on which everything slips, sparkles. Details become transparent when the mental projection is strong enough: sand on polished brain, a grain on the baize of a snooker table.
Lethal psy ritual targeting its own neurosis. The hunting season in K.J.’s mind is now open.

K.J. (lethal psy ritual), Niels Trannois’ second solo exhibition at Supportico Lopez, comprises a new body of work. For this exhibition, the artist has decided to involve other people in the making of the works, giving others the ability to determine or push the direction of the works. In doing so, the artist makes visible aesthetics, directions and thoughts shared with his peers. He invited Sophie Bueno-Boutellier to work together on a floor installation and a wall piece made out of excerpts of Trannois work; the artist also collaborated with Emmanuel Crivelli (graphic designer, POV newspaper) to design a series of stickers, attached onto the tiled surface of the works as a virus, and to conceive the backside of two works hanging from the ceiling.

Niels Trannois (born 1976, France) lives and works in Berlin. Recent solo exhibitions include: – ••˜\ˆ˘ˆ ^\_ (moirée, la surface), In extenso, Clermont-Ferrand, FR (2016); S (oú s’insinue une impression sourde), Supportico Lopez, Berlin; B (hands in a Chinese cookie jar), Galerie Chez Valentin, Paris (2013). Recent group shows include: Happy Ending, FRAC Champagne-Ardenne, Reims, FR; De leur temps (5), IAC Villeurbanne , FR (2016). In 2016 he curated the group show “Le Bleu de la nuit” with Armando Andrade Tudela, Sophie Bueno – Boutellier, Julien Bouillion, Emmanuelle Castellan, Lorraine Châteaux, Emmanuel Crivelli at CCA Antratx, Mallorca, ES.

Niels Trannois, K.J. (lethal psy ritual), 2017
Installation view at Supportico Lopez, Berlin

Niels Trannois, il découvre un monde étrange, 2017, acrylic and chopsticks on tiles on woodbox, 140 x 100 x 6 cm (55 1/8″ x 39 3/8″ x 2 3/8″)

Niels Trannois, K.J. and Rubin Mcmanus, 2007, 2016, acrylic, emulsion, varnish, high density silk on tiles on wood, 140 x 100 x 6 cm (55 1/8″ x 39 3/8″ x 2 3/8″)

Niels Trannois, love saves the day or K.J. pays tribute to David Mancuso (featuring Sophie Bueno Boutellier), 2017, acrylic, articulated wooden arm, felt, sublimation print on chiffon, jack cable, 120 x 30 x 10 cm (47 1/4″ x 11 3/4″ x 3 7/8″)

Niels Trannois, lycaons & suricats, 2017, acrylic, stickers, emulsion, varnish, high density silk on tiles on wood, 140 x 100 x 6 cm (55 1/8″ x 39 3/8″ x 2 3/8″)

Niels Trannois, taugh rasca (les cadors du bassin) (featuring Emmanuel Crivelli), 2017, acrylic and stickers on tiles on wood, 140 x 100 x 6 cm (55 1/8″ x 39 3/8″ x 2 3/8″)

Niels Trannois, toi tu peux danser sur l’ombre, 2017, acrylic, emulsion, varnish, high density silk on tiles on wood, 140 x 100 x 6 cm (55 1/8″ x 39 3/8″ x 2 3/8″)