Telephone sheep and more in the conceptual art of artist Jean-Luc Cornec

Tell us what you do and your beginnings.

I work conceptually with various techniques and in different fields: photography, painting, collage, installation, object, and text. I grew up in very simple circumstances in Finistère (Brittany) – without books, without art. Surprisingly, it was people I met during military service who introduced me to the world of art and showed me options.

During and long after my art studies, I found it difficult to refer to myself as an artist. My focus has always been, and continues to be, on making the artistic process and applied methods visible, contrary to the “myth of the intuitively creative artist”.

I was influenced by the intellectual atmosphere of structuralism. In my studies, I delved into authors like Roland Barthes, writers like Georges Perec, and other representatives of OULIPO (Workshop of Potential Literature) and composed palindromes. I transferred the method of writing texts to visual expression and worked on its further development – in my studio as a Workshop for Potential Images.

What does your work aim to say?

For me, art is a way to express my experience of the world, my perspective on it, and my relationship with it, like reflecting on images. I find it great when people react differently to my works, seeking and finding different statements in them. A good example is the installation “TribuT” with the telephone sheep. Is it a joke? A critique of the clone world? A commentary on the dystopian novel by Philip K. Dick “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?” Or pastoral power in the sense of Michel Foucault?

The interpretation is significantly influenced by the context: be it a church, a digital art biennial, or a communication museum. There are indeed works with concrete statements, although the statement is not my starting point. I can illustrate this by describing a work process. I have always been interested in the visual impact of letters. While exploring potential letter images in three-dimensional space, I began building pyramids.

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