Joan Cornela: Making Magical Laughter “Paintings”
If there are a hundred ways to be funny, Joan Cornellà must be the one that’s the least ostentatious, yet wows everyone with a witty laugh. The harmless and weird signature smiling face, placed on the cheek of a sexy beauty taking a selfie in the mirror, or on the face of a fashionable old lady doing a handstand on a skateboard, does not feel inconsistent, even if it is switched to other parts of the body. Inspires nonsensical and grotesque effects. Even if you haven’t heard of Cornella’s name, you must have seen his work online. Cornela can be regarded as a prolific figure in the contemporary art world. Since 2013, he has released new works on social networking sites every week. His surreal humorous sketches have attracted fans of stars like Paris Hilton. , even the critical Donald Trump endorsed him: “You can ignore me, but I must recommend him!” Grass” new favorite.
There are tens of thousands of Internet celebrity cartoonists, why does Cornela rush to the top? There is no taboo in his dictionary, anything can be used as a joke, and of course he is not afraid of offending anyone sacred. “For me personally, it’s just a fictional story that makes me laugh out loud, and the reality is so creepy.” As an undercover observer of a metropolis, he teased everything around him with a big brain, which led to many seemingly distrustful stories. A well-meaning bit of bad humor. In the atmosphere of national entertainment in the United States, these absurd expressions somewhat reveal the helplessness of life at the bottom. Cornela had a premonition that some works would be boycotted once they came out, and he never defended himself against negative comments such as bloody violence and being unsuitable for children, which is also the attitude an artist born for art should have.
In 2023, Cornela will come to China again with his solo exhibition “No Man’s Land”. From online to offline, the exhibition venue has become a place where Internet celebrities check in: sculptural dolls begging for hugs without hands, and social animals running with blood splattering on their way to work. These images directly hit the pain points of young people today. “Generation Z” are no longer ashamed to express their predicament like their predecessors, but instead use it as a rare experience. Instead of keeping unhappy things in one’s heart, it is better to tell them to make everyone happy. This kind of free and easy is also the charm of Cornela’s works.
Sick society: It’s okay to smile when you encounter embarrassment around the corner
In the face of the “introverted” workplace with increased pressure and the messy and complicated world, modern people are often tired of fighting, and generally have no feeling for chicken soup. With a pen in one hand and a knife in the other, Cornela analyzed the tired and restless symptoms of the public, and painted a portrait belonging to this era. The strong medicine he prescribed is like a dark dish mixed with multiple weird flavors. The candy-colored skin of the macaron is just an illusion of cuteness. It is this indescribable pleasure that forces lovers of heavy flavors to repeatedly test on the verge of death. Compared with “Buddhism”, “laying flat” and “putting down”, Cornela does the opposite and adds spices to negative energy It can bring some comfort, which is unexpected, but reasonable.
It seems that the clouds are calm and the wind is light, but in fact they are full of worries. The last straw that breaks the camel’s camel is the moment when adults almost collapse. Cornela feels the same way. “I think we all laugh at misfortune. We must start laughing at the idea of laughing at someone or something, with or without compassion, always with a touch of cruelty. Nonetheless, I’ve noticed that if my illustrations If the plot happened in real life, I would definitely not be able to laugh.” Cornela does not create a sense of humor, he is just a porter of laughter, and he can always speak golden sentences frequently on the road of joy, making you laugh Turning everything into a flash in the face of embarrassment with laughter and tears: It’s okay, your life is doomed to be a failure; Congratulations on getting a job that looks like shit; Do you think your friends will lend a hand, naive! They will only add insult to injury.
For Cornela, 2013 was an extraordinary moment in his comics career, when the first color comic “MOX NOX” came out. This book with bright colors and unique painting style announced his identity as a cartoonist, and also determined his personal style for the publication of the subsequent two books “Zonzo” and “Sot”-six-frame comics, one page and one story. It fits the current fragmented reading habits. The protagonists are in a similar situation, whether they are in a harmonious atmosphere or life-threatening, even if the blood is flowing like a river, there is still a vain and deliberate smile on their faces. The untimely death operation allows both innocence and humor to be used. Social anxieties and ugliness.
The capricious epidemic has made travel out of reach, and “No Man’s Land” is the heart-breaking work that Cornela drew for most people. One of them is the beauty of nature at first glance, with mountains, grasslands, blue sky, and a girl wearing a bow tie smiling and ready to embrace. All these beautiful things are caused by the “I hate everyone” on her clothes, which ruins the scenery. The sudden change of painting style disrupts the originally peaceful life like an epidemic. This statement with strong contrast vents everyone’s irritability and world-weariness. . Cornela strongly agrees with a sentence said by American comedian Bill Hicks: “I believe that there is one thing that is equal to all human beings. We are all sick.” The epidemic has exacerbated the outbreak and evolution of sickness. Physical discomfort is healed, and mental wounds are more difficult to heal. Stagnant social interaction and interpersonal estrangement cannot be repaired in a short period of time, and the destruction of daily life by the epidemic is far more serious than imagined.
Toxic Social: Selfie or Self-Humiliation
Cornela’s work has no title or text, so there are multiple interpretations. Many people try to make up his voice-over, which is also the creator’s concern. , which allows for more thinking and more critical thinking. So even though sometimes I don’t like other people’s interpretations, or feel they can think deeper, it’s part of the game.” Various interpretations based on the work Diversity, except for the one thing about being overly social. Mobile phones provide convenience for the public to record anytime and anywhere, but in the noisy social space, over-reliance on mobile phones and the desire to brush their presence cover up rational thinking. As for turning black and white without knowing it.
Cornela’s work creates a unique visual language, sharply mocking what is expressed. Its iconic six-panel comic strip, in bright colors, expresses a kind of black humor with smiling, morbidly funny expressions of the characters in the painting.
When the boy’s artery was bitten off by a cow, instead of calling for help, he took out his mobile phone to take a selfie; when the witness was in a car accident, he took out his mobile phone to take pictures of the scene of the accident, and even in the panic, he did not forget to give beauty to the injured; The selfie of a beautiful woman on a social networking site is a bald old man standing behind the screen; the seemingly sweet photo of holding hands is actually a self-directed and self-acted farce behind it, and the broken arm is used as a mobile phone stand to take a selfie. Meaning, but also reflects the ruthless utilitarian nature of interpersonal relationships. What the temperature measuring gun reports is not body temperature, but an early warning for fools. Cornela takes gravehead disco hell jokes to the extreme, mocking social monsters with little empathy.
In the real world, live broadcasting, fitness, yoga and other entertainment activities range from flaunting oneself to blindly following the trend. Is it through these to realize the value of life, or is it just to establish a successful “personality”? In several recent works, Cornela took advantage of the wind and inserted advertising-style slogans into comics, which was quite different from the tone of the pictures. A man and a woman walked forward hand in hand with smiles on their faces, but the dialogue was “to create together Have a better tomorrow, and bear more suffering and deceit!” These eccentric and frustrating words are not so much ridicule as outspoken words.
Cornella dares to carry cynicism to the end, and sees the possibility of modern people relieving stress from comics through diversified contemporary life. As well as the rationality of the inertia of daily behavior, and make a judgment, whether to rein in the precipice or follow the trend?
Joan Cornela’s comics have always played cards against common sense, directly hitting sensitive social topics, from popular culture to political morality, race and religion, all-encompassing, although they don’t say a word, they hit the nail on the head. Many seemingly sacrosanct issues convey unspeakable truths under the guise of Cornela’s exaggerated humor. He pushes the fate of the protagonist into the abyss, and satirizes the stupidity and narrowness of human nature in car accidents and fires, suicides and homicides, and killing each other. For the audience, it is not only the eyeballs that are hit, but also the fragile glass heart, because the thrilling scenes experienced by the protagonist in the painting are likely to be ambushed by his side, and he shudders when he thinks about it. Those who cannot laugh are the victims, and those who laugh out loud may be the accomplices.
