Big Red Kiss - 2009

Fiberglass, coated red - h300cm (350cm avec socle inox pour extérieur) x 280cm

Installation view (sharing exhibition space with the work of Felice Varini) at the Contemporary Art Centre of Chatellerault

 

«For instance a Coca Cola bottle is attacked by two planes (The Kiss, 2008). The piece has multiple meanings, it can be a symbolic representation of a Saint-Sebastien, pierced by arrows or it can be a critique of the consequences of capitalism, as the association of the two objects can be interpreted as a cross between the 9/11 attacks and the marketing giants. A priori nothing seems to link these two elements. One is a terrorist strike that traumatized the whole world (a subject still very under presented as it is still taboo), the other is an object of hyper-consumption, a symbol of the crushing effects of globalization. The use of "hard hitting shortcuts" allows the two objects to open up universal interpretations that transcend culture and are understood by all.It is precisely this global dimension that Arnaud Cohen wishes to work within. The objects reproduced at a different scale or in a hardly altered form are part of our everyday lives, our interactions whether conscious or unconscious to the image: media, publicity, artistic, or religious. Cohen states: If the meaning is fundamental, the sharing of this meaning is something else. This is why it is so important for me to use the letters of the demotic alphabet. Like this I can offer a first level reading, without ever giving up the privilege of further exchange with those who make the effort and have the means. So my Big Red Kiss is of course an allegory of the attacks of 11th September, America Under Attack, a Pearl Harbor of vertical capitalism, but it is also a Saint Sebastian, a Christ on the cross, the world market victim of the tools of globalization, the telescoping of two works by Dali (his May West mouth and his Dream caused by the flight of a bee around a pomegranate one second before awakening), the assassination of the father whether it's Warhol or Koons, and still many more things: did you know it takes up to nine liters of water to produce one liter of Coca Cola? What do you think the wars of the 21st century should look like? »

Julie Crenn, Arnaud Cohen Mécanismes de la contestation, in revue LAURA #14