TRNZ has a fascination for short storytelling. As a former advertising creative, he had a knack for creating really short stories (think 15-seconders for short attention spans). These eventually had fewer and fewer words—until he moved on to tell tales almost purely through paintings instead. You can see these stories come to life in Downward Facing Blooms, opening at Thinkspace Projects on October 19, 2024.
TRNZ captures fleeting moments in the form of familiar images shaped into unfamiliar forms. As someone who likes working with familiar things, He ironically feels misarranging things has been his visual vocabulary. By reconfiguring the familiar into unfamiliar forms, he feels the most banal and repulsive can be encountered differently. In Downward Facing Blooms, he explored the infusion of neon colors underneath his signature paintings and imagined botany in a way that pleases him the most.
Familiar and unfamiliar, banal and potent, reflective and repulsive, all packaged in quiet little vignettes that point to other moments beyond the canvas. Keen eyes see that despite the seemingly calm surface of TRNZ’s works, a strong but silent undercurrent begs to differ.
