Catalogue Detached Involvement

Reinier Vrancken contributes to this exhibition as Raniero. The moment when an Italian lady pronounced his name as Raniero, he embraced it and saw it as the birth of something new. An alter ego for the visual artist was created. Even though the translation of something means the same, the name does consist of different letters and sounds and thus feels differently. They are the same and yet different. Raniero exists as an idea, a fictional character that is part of the visual artist. The visual artist also raises the question as to what happens when he takes on a different role: would he create works of art that he wouldn’t normally produce? 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.

This second work of art by Reinier Vrancken reads like an apology, but raises many questions at the same time. “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.” What did the visual artist do to Bowie? There is a tissue next to these words and it is claimed that it has David Bowie’s lipstick on it. It refers to one of the objects that was on display in the travelling David Bowie exhibition a few years ago, including at the Groninger Museum. Vrancken doesn’t reveal whether this is a relic of a fan or a museum artefact. It seems to be all about the mythical status that pop stars can achieve and the way in which this is reflected on the objects around them: signed posters, items of clothing, basically everything that the hands of a pop musician have touched becomes highly valuable.