Reinier Vrancken & The LetterS pace Department
AFFILIATE (WIELS), Brussels
12.03.26-28.03.26 & 09.04.26-25.04.26
Text: Antoinette Jattiot & Yann Chateigné
Graphic design: Robert Milne
Documentation: Fabrice Schneider
The exhibition is based on a simple principle of association: during several playful sessions—evoking games of Quartet or Mahjong—Vrancken and TLSD formed pairs between their works. The work (A) by TLSD (object/image) was thus associated with the title of the work (B) by Vrancken. Conversely, in the second exhibition, the work (B) by Vrancken is staged and associated with the title of the work (A) by TLSD, represented on the floor plan available at AFFILIATE. In March, on one of the walls of the space, one discerns the drawing of an instruction (“faire disparaître” written in mirror-image) and an arrow, purloined from a found architectural plan and reproduced according to the scale. The architect's red inscription on the plan meets two contradictory forces: the gesture, as random as it seems, translates an act that becomes law—an irreversible choice of disappearance. On Vrancken's side, the work from which the title used here originates comes from a third party's erroneous translation of his name, reappropriated and used as material for his contribution to an exhibition in 2018: a work materialized across all textual and communication media.
Antoinette Jattiot
In have two, Vrancken’s work appears in the form of a label, on which all the information about the work— translated from English into Italian—can be read. But one word, “Raniero” remains untranslated. The name appears like a shadow, a negative space within language. This single object brought into the space by the artists describes the principle of the work: during the exhibition, the artist intervenes under the name Raniero.The mystery of language, which narrates, suggests as much as it makes real, performs what it words. The artist disappears. He changes his name, through the power of the text.
We have nothing else to see; we just have to imagine. Noting No Thing, TLSD’s title, reinforces the sense of absence onto which to project Raniero’s virtual presence— the necessity of a void to feel this apparition.
Yann Chateigné Tytelman