TEXAS BAR BORDEL: Corentin Canesson + invité.e.s

‘’Paintings from Texas and Brittany’’

For Pierre Molinier, “our mission on earth is to transform the world into total mayhem.” In February 1956, the surrealist artist wrote to André Breton to announce the opening of his brothel, the ‘Texas Bar’. Corentin Canesson’s new exhibition at Komunuma looks back on the last two years of his production. Although this new body of work presents itself simply as an exhibition of “paintings from
Texas to Brittany”, it also embraces the work of invited artists as well as other creative gestures that nourish his process. The starting point of this exhibition is the Prix du FRAC Bretagne / Art Norac that
Corentin Canesson was awarded in 2021. 

He went on to complete two new series while in residency
in Rennes and in Gouesnou in the Finistère region
of France and reenacted in January 2022 at the
Visual Arts Center in Austin, Texas under the title “Sleep Spaces” where all the paintings were completed on site. During the last lockdown in 2021, Corentin Canesson also participated in the residency “Art Fleur et Nature”
[Art Flower and Nature] at the Crédac [Centre regional
d’art contemporain] in Ivry-Sur-Seine alongside Damien Le Dévedec. All of the works have since been dispersed. In each of these residency-exhibitions, the anchor of the projects was the painting of Corentin Canesson. Yet, each one was nevertheless an opportunity to introduce
other artists works and to reinforce the collaborative dimension of his approach while rendering the limit
between studio and exhibition space increasingly uncertain. Over the last two years, from Brittany to Texas, with a stop in Ivry-Sur-Seine, new motifs and pictorial gestures have appeared in his work. These include the representation of the coyote, the execution of a trompe l’oeil mural wallpaper as well as the intervention of other artists or the introduction of the color mauve influenced by the exhibition “Mauve Zone” curated by Elsa Vettier at the FRAC Bretagne. The exhibition “Texas Bar Bordel” is the prolongation of these different experimentations. The paintings on view were made in Brittany and Texas, some of which have been completed in the gallery space of Komunuma during the install; “Covid Paintings” previously exhibited at the Crédac in the exhibition “La vie des tables” [The Life of Tables]; selected works not only by artists represented by the gallery, but also other artists
invited by Corentin Canesson; diverse texts; wall paintings; posters; roses; and, finally, music and video clips of the band TNHCH which the artist is a part of. 

A beautiful mayhem, in short.