Ricou Gallery, Brussels

French artist born in 1976, John Cornu shows in his work a strong societal observation through an aesthetic legacy of minimalism, but tinged with post-modern romanticism. Interested in topics such as modern ruin or the passage of time and its influence on humans, John Cornu establishes in each of his creations an atmosphere both poetic and dramatic.

Installed in “vis-à-vis” with a series of painting, Stack offers a form of destruction, and blindness. Borrowing its title from an iconic piece of Donald Judd, this piece – clearly referential – offers a romantic reinterpretation of the 1960s modernist form. By putting down the structure and going back to poor materials such as lumber, this sculpture, which seems to have been a fire victim, tries to poetically recall that even most radical forms of modernist art will be one day or another caught by the inexorable passage of time. Therefore, both pieces convoke notions of difference and repetition but also some formal codes that are being revisited in terms of beautiful and real entropy.