below sea level kind of things
niels trannois
The exhibition is titled Below Sea Level Kind of Things, which is an idea I had about studio practice as an underwater immersion; indeed everything that “happens” in the show could be seen as clues or excerpts extracted and arranged from this place which is the core of my practice.
It may seem obvious that what happens in the context of a show has been thought out and arranged beforehand in the studio, but in this case, and talking about my own personal artistic practice, the “studio side of things” is a sort of crossroads where everyday thoughts try to find their way into sensible forms; what will be shown is as close as possible to what would be “behind the scenes” from a theatrical perspective.
Behind every piece is hidden an idea that what you see is the counter part, the excerpt or leftover of another outcome; and in order to be shown or arranged as a new piece, the leftovers had to be forgotten in the flow of work the studio to then be reimagined as something new to be used as a proper piece.
Here we are speaking of time, the time it takes to do something, the time it takes to forget and digest those things and the time it takes after a while to remember those things, sometimes in order to talk about them or approach them. In the end I am talking about “studio time”, which is quite different from regular time.
I wanted to be under the influence, like Gena Rowlands was in Cassavetesʼ A Woman Under the Influence; I had this film in mind in order to mentally touch upon this idea of a melody of things that is conducted by feelings and emotion, how human sensibility can be read through forms, attitudes, and practice.
In the movie Gena is hypersensitive, under the influence and dependent on the social pressure and her love for her husband, she reaches the limit of it, but no one can predict what her reaction will be, the effects of this hypersensitivity. It is this very unknown, unpredictable state that is our point of convergence.
In my case this is translated into how I cannot foresee (even if I am the one bringing it about) the extent of the penetration of external references in my own work; even if, these references are in the end used in a “loosely”, they never become case studies during the elaboration of a work; I might have been under some kind of influence but they never lead me to specific applications, since the materials I use (the leftovers) cannot have a predictable status, instead I play with them through thought association, synesthetically.
The result of all this can be seen in a set of collages that are both very precise and very impulsive; this set will be shown with a specific scenography so that one will not be able to forget where they came from, leftovers lying about all over the floor of my studio, at times even on the walls, like dormant footnotes waiting for their turn to awake and be used again, after being for a time off the radar, below sea level.
For any further information please contact:
gallery@unosunove.com