Kelly Weiss, Iwan Warnet, Samuel Francois
K W I W S F
Opening:
Sat 14 March 2026, 6-9 pm
EXIBITION STATEMENT
June 2025: Kelly Weiss, Iwan Warnet and Samuel François are welcomed by La Tannerie, an art centre in Brittany (France), for a month-long artistic residency. To explore the garden, unpack and arrange the paintings they have brought with them, observe the influence of the changing weather, share meals, gather materials, dye paper, listen to the stream, open the windows to the dragonflies, hang each other’s work, think about the path of those who will come to visit, sow clues, make surfaces respond to each other, let in a draught – all these were ways of immersing themselves in the situation and creating work with it. Over this extended period of time and through mutual influences, the exhibition KWIWSF was constructed as the sedimented traces of their presence in the space. It is the result of this time spent together.
For Berthold Pott Cologne they developed a new version of the exhibition from La Tannerie, interacting with the different space constellations of the gallery.
KW
Precarious constructions, Kelly Weiss’s untitled (trap) appear as micro-environments, like terrariums. Through the play of reflections, they reveal the irregularity of their assemblages, dust and deposits, and hint at the shapes and materials slipped inside. Oscillating between the idea of a rudimentary box and that of a model, they invite us to focus on the fragment and then perceive the whole from this new scale.
Kelly Weiss is interested in polycarbonate for its translucency and its initial function of protection and separation. But also because it belongs to a standardised industrial economy linked to development, greenhouse construction and space optimisation. Transposed into the exhibition space, it becomes a pictorial surface, a sculptural construction, or re-enacts the cloudy transparency of a glass roof.
IW
Iwan Warnet’s Wandering Lines drawings are explorations of the various possibilities of the line, of its wanderings. These dialogues between fluid bodies and plants seek to create a territory of the indefinite, where the gender of the figures no longer matters, where the lines that draw them stray. In the exhibition space, they are scattered like punctuation marks that focus attention. In the same way that, on a map, the legend gives meaning to the reading of the abstract elements that compose it, his drawings are discreet clues. They influence our perception of the paintings that surround them and give the surfaces as a whole a more emotional than formal dimension: the figures and plants emerge in shades of almond, the madder-dyed papers could be a skin, the earrings placed on the reclining screen become traces of a presence…
SF
Halfway between sculpture and painting, Lay Down, 2026, synthesises several of Samuel François‘ concerns: working with simple materials while reducing gestures and interventions as much as possible; the relationships we have with everyday objects; and their place and function in our living spaces. The metallic surface of Lay Down welcomes stranded fragments and objects, clues that invite us to invent stories. Experiencing the silvery expanse of the ocean on an evening in June 2025…there are waves, dragonflies, the sun soon setting, „Night falls, crossed by wandering moths“. A seductive and intriguing cadmium-coated surface, chrome is scattered throughout Samuel François‘ body of work like so many cadmium particles ingested over the months by Ferblantier.
Invented in a space pierced by windows opening onto the garden and swept by the changing lights of the coastal skies, KWIWSF is now redefining itself through its encounter with a place of a completely different materiality. It is through the attention with which the artists weave links between their works and the particularities of a space that the exhibition becomes a shared environment, an installation by a trio in which each artist’s forms assume their porosity to those of the others.
Each of these three practices is constructed with attention to surfaces, their own lives, the unexpectedness of their transitory states, and the meaning that can be attributed to them. Withdrawn into itself and carefully packaged in Brittany in the autumn of 2025, KWIWSF reborn along the Rhine just before spring.
CVs :
KW
Kelly Weiss was born in 1996 in Belfort (FR). She is a resident at the CAP – Centre d’art de Saint-Fons (FR) workshops since 2024.
She considers her work to be strongly linked to, if not dependent on, the context in which it is created and/or exhibited. She creates installations composed of paintings, recycled elements and floor-based constructions. These different media are approached pictorially and explored according to different states of alteration and intervention.
In February 2025, she presented her first institutional solo exhibition at 19, Centre régional d’art contemporain de Montbéliard, France. In October 2025, she presented a new solo exhibition at the Gesellschaft für Actuelle Kunst in Bremen.
IW
Iwan Warnet was born in 1996, in Brest (FR). He lives and works between Alfortville (FR) and Plouguerneau (FR).
In his painting, he explores through the ambiguities of representation, the active role of the viewer in the perception of a surface. His practice leans toward allusion rather than assertion, playing with the hint of appearance. He creates a body of work built on clues and fragments.
Infused with his experience as a scenic painter for theatre and opera, his conception of painting is doubled by a scenographic sensibility. In his exhibitions, he unfolds his work as installations that borrow as much from the scale of the theatre stage as from the more intimate one of domestic interiors.
He also acts as curator for La Tannerie art centre, where he is developing a programme of residencies and exhibitions called The Intuition of Place.
SF
Samuel François was born in 1977 in Pompey (FR) and lives and works in Hettange-Grande (FR).
His practice revolves around investigations into landscape, stories and/or anecdotes, and questions about the functional objects that accompany our daily lives. He works with a wide range of media, including installation, sculpture and video.
His work has been exhibited in galleries and institutions in Europe and the United States, such as the Swedish Institute for Nuit Blanche in Paris, The Marfa Book Company in Marfa, Art O-Rama in Marseille, and the Michel Journiac Gallery in Paris. He is represented by Berthold Pott Gallery, Cologne.
