Christian Alandete, “John Cornu” (fr & eng)
John cornu développe une oeuvre contextuelle, minimaliste et conceptuelle qui s’inscrit dans le lieu d’exposition de manière à la fois subliminale et manifeste. Partant d’un détail physique du lieu, il opère un travail de reconfiguration qui vient à la fois souligner ce détail et l’évaporer dans la pièce nouvellement créée. Ses pièces empruntent souvent leurs matériaux à ceux du bâtiment pour mieux s’y confondre. À la villa Savoye, architecture caractéristique de le Corbusier, il démultiplie les pilotis d’origine dans un jeu de contamination qui, bien que perturbant l’esthétique moderniste, rejoint certains aspects idéologiques de l’architecte (tel que « le musée à croissance illimité » pensé comme un bâtiment en perpétuel développement). - John Cornu has developed a body of work that is contextual, minimalist and which is integrated in its exhibition space in a way that is subliminal and yet overt at the same time. Taking as his starting point a physical detail from a place, he performs a process of reconfiguration that emphasises this detail and yet at the same time subsumes it in the new work. His works often borrow their materials from the buildings that house them in order to blend in more effectively. At the Villa Savoye, whose architecture is so characteristic of Le Corbusier, he multiplies the original pilotis in a game of contamination, which, whilst it disrupts the modernist aesthetic, is closely akin to certain ideological aspects of the architect (such as “the museum that never stops growing”, conceived of as a building in perpetual development). The artist’s other proliferations and grafts take on a new dimension in his recent works, moving away from abstract geometric forms in order to evoke more organic forms in a reconquest of a synthetic Eden. Blurring the boundaries between the exhibition space and the work installed there, he presents us with a proliferative work, a rhizome, which contaminates other works, thereby helping to reveal the links contained within the strategy of the group exhibition and, by extension, within the workings of the art world. © Christian Alandete |