Reinier Vrancken - Selected works

REINIER VRANCKEN

September 8 - August 22, 2022: Me in my going out of myself (and you in yours), Reinier Vrancken & Émile Hermans, SB34—the pool, Rue Saint-Bernard 34/ground floor, 1060 Brussels

(...) bleeding from another body. Flattened on the wall, the artist cut the speck out of the wallpaper. The piece was then magnified to match the artist’s stature. It sounds like magical thinking: the transformation of identity through a wall, by means of the combination of blood and mosquito. By enlarging the bloodspot, Vrancken reappropriates himself. Consequentially, the lack of physical volume of the vinyl sticker barely enables us to define it as a spatial object. A conscious choice, for Vrancken, who in this way bends this merger in the direction of the architecture, a context in which the new measurements and proportions of the blood spot find their new resonance. (Machteld Leij, 2021)

(…) who (…) on the wall (...). By enlarging the spot exactly to his own height (…) he re-appropriated the bleeding. Due to the absence of dimension—a sticker—Het Gebouw forms a new skin in which the blood is safely inside (…) (Emma Wiersma, 2022)

The bleeding into and the bleeding out of vinyl decal 2021 1800 x 1070 mm photo by Charlott Markus

(...) as an artist, brouwn situated himself in the measurements, dimensions and proportions, all based on his own footsteps. Vrancken disassembles the table in order to strip it of its functionality and thereby underscores its meaning as a work of art. Meanings move along with Vrancken’s intervention as he engages in institutional art criticism: should the museum actually have included the tables in its own collection, instead of dismissing them? (Machteld Leij, 2021)

(...) Given such conceptual affinity, it is no wonder that Vrancken was surprised that the Stedelijk Museum Schiedam had a table (with the dimensions 3 x 7.5 x 1.5 sb-feet) made to present a work by brouwn, but had passed it down to the rental company Museumgoed as a functional object after the exhibition. The question raised by this act is where brouwn’s work begins and ends. Is it conceptually justifiable to include one object in the collection as a work of art and to reduce the other object that has been conceived within the same conceptual framework into a utility object? (Manus Groenen, 2022)

Untitled disassembled stanley brouwn table 2021 3 x 7.5 x 1.5 sb-foot photo by Charlott Markus

Someone had guillotined the breath that just seconds ago was someone else’s, and seconds later, too, but at that moment was mine. What I was going to say when right before the first syllable I was interrupted must have been something really profound. I drew in the breath that on its way out would throw whatever it was I was going to say into the not me. Instead, I swallowed the w, h, a, t, a, f, a, l, s, e, s, t, a, r, and t. A false star and a false start.

I was given a poem the way newsreaders in the middle of a broadcast are handed by a hovering arm an ominous note: the guillotine. Because of how a poem can be sharp but paper too, although that isn’t necessarily sharp but just very, very thin. But when thin is at its thinnest, thin and sharp become one and the same.

How long would it take to cut through a finger with a piece of paper, I wonder? Depends on what is and isn’t on the paper. A music score, a drawing, maybe even nothing at all, or a poem. In any case, I think it takes a drawing of a knife less time to cut through a finger than it does an empty sheet. Five cuts.

Out of that finger comes your ghost to wrap itself around you like linen around its pharaoh. Your ghost wrapping makes you look like a mirage.

Be sure to have it check your body for ticks.

Especially a piece of paper that is also a one-word poem cuts like a hot knife through finger. Do you remember Aram Saroyan’s poem lighght? Kniiife for a most accurate cut or knifffe for an all thumbs jagged edge gash. Imagine you cut off the tip of your finger with one of those poems and you leaking out of yourself like smoke emanating from a cigarette. You could draw messages in the air with it. James Lee Byars did that and said it was the perfect love letter: I Love You, backwards in the air.

A Thinnest Thin exhibition text 2021 photo by Charlott Markus

(...) a limited edition mail-out dispatched prior to the exhibition. The project space is named as an homage to the artists and founders Tim Mathijsen and Tirza Kater's friend, Marwan, who left Amsterdam. (...) He employs the marketing and communicating tools of Marwan, and transforms the hosting initiative's narrow flyer into a concert wrist band. (...) it can twice encircle his wrist, or by extension, once around Tim's and Tirza's - the sum of Marwan - as well. (...) Once the band is unfolded, the information is undecipherable from fragments which are made only to be legible in its folded form. (Christina Li, 2021)

Invitation for Marwan folded digital print 2021 395 x 35 mm photography by Gert Jan van Rooij

(…) a bone comb with two teeth sharpened to points. The work alludes to the many versions of the myth surrounding Cleopatra's alleged suicide. (…) Vrancken talks about how leaving a snakebite on your body, real or fake, could possibly guarantee a next life. The comb does not live up to the image that the title evokes in us. We don't see a flower covered with dew drops at all. (…) Vrancken is not only invested in the meanings to which he wants to refer, but also with how he wants to refer to them. Flower, dew (2021) is a complex dance in which Reinier challenges us to search for meanings in all layers of the work. (Linda Köke, 2021)

(…) the snake symbolises immortality and rebirth. That contradiction suggests the notion of suicide with the hope of a new life to come. The title references Arthur Flowerdew, an Englishmen who claimed to have visions of his past life. Reincarnation may not have been that far fetched, his claims would suggest. (Machteld Leij, 2021)

Flower, dew two sharpened teeth on a comb bone 2021 150 x 32 x 5 mm photography (1 & 2) by Charlott Markus

(…) Emma’s smell is in the pile to the left, and her clothes are in the pile to the right. Identity shifts, but only half a place. Every outfit is passed along to another individual to be washed, who then lends out his or her clothing too, etc. (…) A relay of appropriation and expropriation.
(Machteld Leij, 2021)

(…) They are part of an ongoing series by Vrancken, in which he asks a specific individual to give a worn outfit to a stranger, after which the stranger washes these clothes and passes on his own clothes to the next person. (Emma Wiersma, 2021)

(…) In this way, Vrancken makes clear that within the apparently carefully arranged clothing, there are overlapping identities. (Mirjam Beerman, 2020)

Everybody becoming everybody else Isabel’s clothes and Rabin’s smell 2020 250 x 200 x 15 mm Everybody becoming everybody else Rabin’s clothes and Manus’ smell 2020 250 x 200 x 15 mm Everybody becoming everybody else Manus’s clothes and Louise’s smell 2020 250 x 200 x 15 mm Everybody becoming everybody else Louise’s clothes and Bernadette’s smell 2020 250 x 200 x 15 mm photo by Luuk Smits

Everybody becoming everybody else Bernadette’s clothes and Sander’s smell 2021 250 x 200 x 15 mm Everybody becoming everybody else Sander’s clothes and Matt’s smell 2021 250 x 200 x 15 mm

Everybody becoming everybody else Matt’s clothes and Rudi’s smell 2021 250 x 200 x 15 mm Everybody becoming everybody else Rudi’s clothes and Sarah’s smell 2021 250 x 200 x 15 mm Everybody becoming everybody else Sarah’s clothes and Rob’s smell 2021 250 x 200 x 15 mm

Everybody becoming everybody else Rob’s clothes and Emma’s smell 2021 250 x 200 x 15 mm Everybody becoming everybody else Emma’s clothes and Machteld’s smell 2021 250 x 200 x 15 mm photo by Charlott Markus

(…) Vrancken’s works are propositions to interpret the amalgamation of conceptual, semantic and poetic leaps and conceptions that are ascribed to seemingly autonomous objects and words around us. (…) The title is borrowed from the final line of Thomas James’ poem “Room 101” whereby the protagonist narrates how he is slowly turned to stone. Notions of preservation and transfiguration are pushed further when the title is juxtaposed with what is on display: different bottled fluids Vrancken obtained after working with a professional embalmer. (…) the look and feel of marble. (Christina Li, 2021)

A hornet tests my sculptured skin embalming formula composed to give the appearance of marble 2021 dimensions variable photo by Gert Jan van Rooij

(…) intervention at the front of the Prospects publication. The starting point is the assumption that every word consists of two parts: on the one a meaning, on which we all agree, and on the other hand an emotional value. In translation the meaning remains the same, but the feeling changes and thus deviates from that meaning. Vrancken makes this distance visible in the work A translation between words starting at opposite ends of the alphabet (2018-ongoing). In an existing text he looks for a word that starts with the letter a and in translation starts with the letter z. Previous iterations of the work include the translation of the word 'are' into 'zijn' or 'aim' in the German 'ziel'. With these subtle interventions, Vrancken lays bare the space between the interpretations and connotations of the words we exchange. (Mirjam Beerman, 2020)

(…) proposed to annotate Shimmer’s website with (…) a translation between words starting at opposite ends of the alphabet. The word ‘accessible’, located on the ‘About’ page on Shimmer’s website, translates to züganglich. (…) We found his intervention interesting, particularly as it becomes our only permanent work that will adapt or even disappear if we remove the word that Reinier annotates. (Eloise Sweetman and Jason Hendrik Hansma, 2020)

A translation between words starting at opposite ends of the alphabet transparant page (Ibo One, 60g) 2021 Prospects, Mondriaanfund, 2021, b/w ill., 170 x 120 mm, 175 pages

(…) The viewer, visiting galerie Gallery, partly misses the exhibition. But only by a whisker (…) Depending on the wishes of the artist(s), Jan Huijben empties his apartment. He temporarily stores away his furniture (…) like seawater smoothing out the unevenness in the sand with every wash of the waves. When the exhibition comes to a close the apartment is restored and the furniture reinstalled. (…) The artist is under the impression that the space is once again empty and makes the false assumption of it always returning to that state. Museums and galleries indeed begin with an empty space, before installing the exhibition in question, but galerie Gallery is foremost a furnished living room. Here, the first actions regarding the exhibitions are removing, hiding, concealing and keeping secret (…) Therefore, this is no more than a repetition of all past exhibitions at galerie Gallery, only paused at a different moment.

Untitled everything in the room 2020 a collaboration with Raquel Vermunt dimensions variable photography by Raquel Vermunt

(…) a stained glass window in the monumental stairwell, where the story of Saint Martin is depicted. (…) Vrancken deliberately chose not to add anything to the space, but to simply rearrange an existing element. On the handrail in the stairwell there are three attachments that have raised the height of the railing. Vrancken brings them back to the railing’s original height. The craftsmanship in the manufacture of these three handmade architectural parts is striking. Presumably it was the caretaker who put a lot of love into this. However, the corrections are not only out of place in terms of aesthetics, but also disrupt the movement that the stair and railing jointly orchestrate. Because the railing suddenly jumps a decimeter in certain places, ones has to adjust his grip and movements while walking on the stairs. (…) By lowering the extension of the balustrade and placing it next to the existing one, it doubles in form without doubling it in function as well. It is a very subtle intervention, which is powerful in its simplicity. I still look up at the window, through which the sun shines on the cloak of Saint Martin, split in two. (Linda Köke, 2019)

De misgrijpers lowered handrail extensions 2019 dimensions variable

(…) an adder, that uses a mountain’s image as its title. Slithering along this mountain is a stretched cloud. (…) this image occupies a space usually inhabited by letters. Like a vowel can be pronounced in several ways—a, aa—, this work can be pronounced as a cloud or as an adder. (Brenda Tempelaar, 2019)

2018—2020 dimensions variable photography (1 & 4) by Nick Thomas

(…) steps in reverse. (…) the exhibition posters were cropped. Three contoured geometrical shapes recur on De Annex’s exhibition posters. Independently these shapes hardly mean anything but as a group they suggest a (…) Cropping the exhibition posters gives shape to a new center, no longer placing the three geometrical shapes in the middle, but the absence that suggests the A.

Cropped exhibition posters offset print 2019 1189 x 561 mm photography by Sander Vermeer

(…) Throughout the exhibition Detached Involvement his name is consistently changed into Raniero: on the invitations, the website, on the gallery’s window, on posters and even in other artworks. (Bas Hendrikx, 2018)

(…) from a few years ago. (...) to divide oneself, as it were, into two people (...) Like a full glass of water divided over two half full glasses (...). The poster makes a similar diffusion in time and shows the distance in years between this moment and the exhibition four years ago. (Emma Wiersma, 2022)

(…) In the work titled Participating in the exhibition as Raniero, Vrancken embraced this dilution in language and participated as Raniero in an exhibition: a name that appeared on all press releases, publications and posters (one of which has been exhibited as a work). It is a semiotic game that Vrancken often plays to separate signifier (such as a word) and the signified. (Manus Groenen, 2022)

Participating in the exhibition as Raniero poster, flyer, advertisements, invitation, press-release, window lettering 2018 dimensions variable

(…) read one side to the other. (…), dropping. (…) Text becomes image, reading becomes seeing (…). maintain their balance on that tipping point. (…) Bas Jan (…) sipped the water beside him on each mark. The work comes to a close with the last words and an empty glass. (…) disappearing, dissolving in which giving in to gravity played an important part as weightless moments translate to vanishing points.

Te lezen vallen Bas Jan Ader’s marks in ‘The Boy Who Plunged Over Niagara’ (Lawrence Elliott, 1962) photocopy, correction fluid 2019 3x 297 x 210 mm photography by Sander Vermeer

(…) apologetically states: “I never meant to kill David Bowie. About a week after his death I came to realise that I had stolen a part of him by using one of his song-titles in a work of art. It was only an accident.” The exhibition includes a tissue, allegedly blotted by David Bowie, in an acrylic glass vitrine. Is this a fan relic or a museum artefact? Vrancken’s work focuses on the potentialities of collective stories, legends, or ideas, and their interplay with the audience. In a conceptual manner he plays with the possibilities entangled in archetypes, collectively inherited thought patterns, and their presence in pop culture, myth and music. In doing so, he explores the multiple interpretations of common models and ideas that can be repurposed and reinterpreted, and their effects on the audience. (Barbara Cueto and Bas Hendrikx, 2016)

(…) With this pictorial title, Vrancken suggests that he partially stole Bowie, who, as a consequence, comminuted to stardust. (…) A similar tissue was exhibited in the traveling exhibition David Bowie Is. But perhaps Vrancken’s tissue is an atonement, more than it is a tribute. The tissue reminisces the moment that Bowie and Vrancken partially coincided in meaning, but a soul was swapped too. An eye, an eye, a tooth, a tooth, is Vrancken’s motto, whose exhibition instills drama in popstars, iconic artists animals and landscapes. (Brenda Tempelaar, 2018)

Where are we now?—The great gig in the sky lipstick, tissue, wood, plexiglass 2016 200 x 150 x 100 mm