Works at : Seoul Art Space_Geumcheon
Stays in : 2012, 2013
Website : www.quentincornet.com
Profile :
Education
Graduated from ECAL, Art Scool of Lausanne
Bachelor in Visual Communication, Switzerland
Graduated from MMU, Manchester Universtity
Master in Visual Art, United Kingdom
Exhibition
2013 National Museum of Guinea & Le Petit Musée, Conakry, Guinea
2012 Geumcheon Art Center, Seoul Art Space. Seoul, South Korea
2010 Foundation for Contemporary Art Ghana. Accra, Ghana WARC. 2010 Biennal of dak’Art 2010, Dakar, Senegal 2009 Meta House. Phnom Penh, Cambodia
Project
Project
2012-2013 Résidence 0 to 1. Workshops at Petit Musée de Conakry, Guinea — Workshops, curating and book design ( Résidence 0 ) in collaboration with ISAG ( Art school of Guinea ) and FENAG ( Guinean foundation for art and artists ) http://issuu.com/fabcap/docs/residence0
2010 1 Workshop 1000, Worshops at FCA Ghana ( Foundation for contemporary Art Ghana) and Vision Art School, Accra, Ghana
2008 Résidence 0. Workshops at Petit Musée de Conakry, Guinea
Residency
2013 Residency at Geumcheon Art Center, Seoul Art Space, South Korea
2012 Residency at Geumcheon Art Center, Seoul Art Space, South Korea
2009 Same Same. Artist residency and workshops at Meta house. Phnom Penh, Cambodia
Works:
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| Same Same, Publication, 2008 |
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| Kotoko Agaya, Film, 2013 |
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| La superbe simplicité requiert d’incommensurables écarts. Video installation, etchings and photography. Installation view. 2012 |
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| La superbe simplicite requiret d'incommensurables ecarts, Video detail, 2012 |
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| La superbe simplicite requiert d'incommensurables ecarts, detail, Etchings and photography print, 55x35cm, 2012 |
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| Animal 6, Melina wood, 70x24x17cm, 2009 |
Quentin Cornet
My work is based around the meeting of cultures and my studio is therefore a nomadic studio. Each new place, each new travel and each new meeting becomes a process of creation.
The Sublimity of Communication
Francesca Zappia (Independent Curator, Art Critic)
“There is a saying that observation changes the observed reality. This also transforms the subject doing the observing.” This quote by philosopher and ethnologist Jean Pouillon regarding a work by Claude Levi-Strauss will be closely related to the artistic world of Quentin Cornet as well.
Quentin Cornet is raising a sign that reads “nomadic studio” while traveling diverse continents and the Amazon, Cambodia, Ghana and Korea, etc. A fixed workspace: Experiments regarding locals, their experiences and varying life styles, histories and cultures were combined to become Cornet’s work materials. His mediums of representation are diverse, including photography, print-making and sculpture, but his most recent works were created through video. Through the medium of video, Cornet intended to emphasize and speak of geographically external experiences. This video work was created in completely different situations and sometimes projected cultural differences as well. It is also the result of an artist’s emotions regarding others and changes in the artist’s own original identity.
A work titled <The Tenderness of Perspectives> (La Tendresse des Perspectives, 2011) represents Africa and the fantastic image of its dense landscape. The images full of life in the piece ask the following. Are we faced directly with spirit-worshipping Africa’s noble world of imagination, or are we facing a European colonial perspective? Does the standard of the contemporary avantgarde compare with the influence of so-called primitive culture on 19th century arts? Cornet questioned the reality he observes through this video, investigated the netting of that reality and exploring the complexity of “my” perceptions regarding others. Simultaneously,he knocked on the audience’s personal worlds of imagination and came to influence their perceptions regarding culture.
If <The Tenderness of Perspectives> has enriched our imaginations through Cornet’s colors, rhythm and pleasurable events, the piece titled <The Perfectly Simple Demand Incommensurable Distances> (La Superbe Simplicité Requiert D’Incommensurables Ecarts, 2012) deals with the loneliness of existences far away and the absence of communication among people. While speaking of the Korean War and the intervention by UN forces, this video sees conflict as a means to conquer the imaginations of others. The piece presents such problems through the lonely story of a French soldier who has participated in the Korean War, his wandering through a brown, desolate landscape bared by the fallen leaves. Against the backdrop of given landscapes, afanciful encounter with Koreans shares the same line of coherence with this landscape’s imagery.
Like <The Tenderness of Perspectives>, landscapes in this work are an important element in the setting of circumstances within the video. Each scene in <The Tenderness of Perspectives> has been aided significantly by natural environments for asurprising productionplaying up the scenes’ fantastic characteristics. In <The Perfectly Simple Demand Incommensurable Distances>, the landscapes had inspired a constitution of narrative approaches, and this transitions the conclusion to a complete contrast from the overall atmosphere. The tree branch fixed in a tangle to the back of a military truck was placed there by the soldier intending to make a wing structure, and the canvas covering the truck bed is placed above it. The truck, thus transfigured once again, wanders through the fields of dried grass. Would this transfigured fake bird, in a role contrasting with previous harshness, not have appeared in order to develop a realistically possible story? The writer likes this idea that this sublime production presents creativity as a universal and new method through which various cultures can communicate.
A Critique of Quentin Cornet
Sung Wan-kyung(Artist, Professor Emeritus
of Inha University)
Quentin Cornet seeks to have a new grasp of
his identity and delve into different cultures or the roots of civilization
whenever his native culture conflicts or interacts with others. His works are
inspired by his new experiences which he had with new people at new places
during his travels, all of which are incorporated therein. The places where he
works are not fixed. Sometimes on his journey, the ports of calls are his
workplaces. As residency artists or project collaborator, he entered into new
projects in Ghana, Senegal, Guinea, and Cambodia. I’d just like to say that his
work is not of an individual one. In most of cases, he collaborates with local
artists, craftpersons, actors or actresses or students, all of whom he comes
across in the course of his travels. Through encounters with diverse
characters, he conjures new forms and ideas. His propositions are collective
products of which he meets and feels. How and what he starts to work are not
constant. It is a routine to conceive a different string of ideas and work
processes wherever and whenever he works. Therefore, the resultant is always
new and creative. The process and results we can see in his portfolio don’t
reveal artist himself conspicuously but are overflowing with a kind of
anthropological vigors.
It may be defined that his works are rooted
in post-colonialism. This is possibly attributed to the fact that he is
interested in conflicts and interaction between cultures and between
civilizations, and that we can feel in his works a thoughtful examination and
experimentation related to identity and border issues, which may be all the
more sensible and specific issues as an artist who was educated and lived in
France and Great Britain, both of which were colonizing nations. Olivier de
Sanderval was an engineer and explorer from Lyon, France, and extensively
explored western areas across Africa after being commissioned as chief in a
colony out there in 1832, engaging in building railroads and trading. With his
passionate love for Africa, he was famous for his resistance against the
white’s brutal conquest of the black, in favor of mutual benefits and
generosity. With a strong interest in him, Cornet traced back his life and
doings in Guinea. Sanderval was not just a conqueror or white plunder. I guess
that the artist might be intrigued by his generous personality and close
affection with Africa Continent.
Cornet shooting in Korea is about the
storyline of a French deserter under U.N Forces who joined battles during
Korean War. I guess this could imply Cornet’s romance of Sanderval on the same
continuum. The film was conceived when he arrived in Korea on February, 2012,
and shot over one month from March on, followed by editing and other works.
Shortly before his departure on the later April, some part of his shots taken
was separately exhibited in a video form, along with other works (prints) at
the Seoul Art Space_Geumcheon. Historically, there has been under no hostile
relations between France and Korea, unlike Vietnam. France had only joined UN
Forces which fought against communists’ attack on Korean Peninsula, and has, unlike
U.S.A., no blood-tied alliance with our country. The film lasts 45 minutes,
where Cornet, cast as hero and deserter, wanders aimlessly in confusion over
his identity and futility of war, ending up killing himself. I wonder what the
film’s final edition would be.
