From bling bling and the world ...
All by engaging in a personal and subjective tiv e, Arnaud Cohen does not hesitate to plunge his work in the here and now, confront in terms of timeliness, a form of guerrilla fun ...
Arnaud Cohen offers a universe "kitsch" in appearance, filled with objects or colored figures, even garish objects already existing, but customized, fiddle, having undergone hybridization ... Nothing too serious at first: garden gnomes dressed for sex instead of the nose, china ... These objects are harmless at first glance far from innocent ...
Arnaud Cohen voluntarily taken the risk to include its travau x in a given period. The title of his exhibition "Love is coming, I share my years Sarkozy" sets the tempo.
"Bling Bling Parade
The first reaction is consider the proposed works to be inseparable in this period related to a specific name. Indeed some of them, as "Bling_bling parade or "Live Presidential plug" reading is im mediately comparable mandate Sarkozy.
"Dive plug presidential"
of Use objects, then, but then diverted recontextualized objects. Arnaud Cohen charging them to blow significances. Setting confrontation, the involvement, interaction always come to support reflection, a critical perspective, political, in this case here, liberalism.
is not "Years Sarkozy" but My has nnées Sarkozy " Grade importantly, the view is not necessary as the only legitimate, or who value truth absolute subjectivity is here claimed. Arnaud Cohen does not seek to compel but to refer ... His work is not an activity book in terms effective activist. The assertion of subjectivity can demonstrate a withdrawal necessary although using certain methods of the Agit-Prop, the example of "vanity" armies operating as much apprehension in us pointing the finger if you can say.
"in Vanity fox "
This temporal dimension given in the work of Arnold Cohen, borrowing from everyday objects, cartoons, a popular world, the closer the approach of "Figuration Narrative" including Fromanger or a Lebel ...
Arnaud Cohen could endorse the statement of Gerald Gassiot-Talabot, "to the derision of American pop static, they oppose" all "the movement of precious life ". Arnaud Cohen does not deny any affiliation with Pop Art but exceeds ambiguous attitude: cynical posture or complacent with the post-
Arnaud But Cohen is not fooled by the idealistic illusion subsequent any attempt at art "activist", "Love Is Coming" apprehended as a whole more like a diary, as a working columnist ...
It also comes tap into the cultural codes and iconographic Western nurture our collective imagination vanities, pictures of martyrs who inhabit Western religious art, times tables devoted to cultural heritage as "Kidnapping of the Sabines " David. This reappropriation of David refers hollowed emment to history painting and the ideological use of the paint. David, first Jacobin, then the official painter of Napoleon.
In Cohen, the head of vanity disappears and gives way to a e hand brandishing a pistol, the theme of crucifixion, "Saint Sebastian "and other performances suffer the same fate. These are recycled and the body become cabins of aircraft on which come to mark the stigmata martyr.
Crucifixion
Arnaud Cohen's work is often and polysemic double trigger. He plays initially, with ironic reversal of values. But this irony soon gives way to a feeling of trouble ... The airplanes or parts of planes are works as "Crucifixion", "Saint Sebastian" or "Saint John" we explode in the face and the first reading immediately below the figure of Sarkozy would deploy just one second. Like Badiou in which "What is Sarkozy's name? "Came wonder what Sarkozy was, Arnaud Cohen has broadened the scope and contextualize" Love is coming, my years Sarkozy "in a broader perspective than the post-11 September.
"In this respect, can we not say that the attack on the World Trade Center disaster Hollywood films is what pornography is to snuff porn sado_maso classics? It is for this reason that the statement is not false provocative Karl-Heinz Stockhausen that the planes hitting the towers constituted a work of art: one can quite perceive the collapse of the towers as the conclusion of "The Passion of the real" art of the twentieth century "
Slavoj Zizeck
The specter of Sept. 11 arose here. with at first, questioning the underlying never tires of challenge by his ambivalence. Ambivalence obviously sought by Arnaud Cohen: who are the martyrs? The victims of the attacks which, as in the phraseology of the Islamist bombers?
referral by Christian iconography, as does Arnaud Cohen, has experience as a Christian fundamentalist discourse quick to denounce Islam as a religion intolerant, just as we question the controversial thesis of Samuel Huntington in his book supported "Clash of Civilizations" .
Secondly, Arnaud Cohen raises the issue of perception of reality, our real "Desert of the Real" work which gives a map of Europe and title inspired by the Matrix movie and went by Slavoj Zizeck, returns to our stunning face the event and the idea of a new era. And to quote yet Zizeck
"Nothing happens at the level of visible material reality, no massive explosion, yet known lunivers seffondrer begins, life disintegrates. "Welcome in the world of reality, Slavoj Zizek, Flammarion, 2005
What stresses Arnaud Cohen, with bitter irony: Love is coming!
these "vanities" armies which we link arms outstretched, do not they designate us in all our potential victim, arms faceless, invisible enemy we can not identify ... That's the reality effect!
"Love is coming" we also tends arms by the strong potential sexual emanating works: Guns stretched like gender, oblong shapes of the fuselage cabin, a universe of James Bond ... The Sabines, treated tires are more than gaping holes subject to the desires of the Empire, garden gnomes in Appendices godeuses ...
Again, Arnaud Cohen plays the ambivalence: sex and death are linked. Drive Death and pornography? Where sex is more than the image of sex ...
Pornography for a presidency that quenches his reign appear, pornography easement zealous in the service of liberal ideology, that of "rights in rats", a nickname given by Alain Badiou to Nicolas Sarkozy,
"Love is coming, my years Sarkozy" gives us just an observation and warns that Sarkozy is the loincloth of the iceberg ...
Arnaud Cohen
"Love is coming, my years Sarkozy, part I"
until November 6, 2010
Galerie Xavier Nicolas
12, Rue des Coutures Saint Gervais
75003 PARIS
