Joan Cornellà: I’m Good Thanks

Posted by Fabio 1 April 2019

Renowned Catalan artist Joan Cornellà returns to London with a series of new works, inviting us to once again peer into his dystopic vision of contemporary life. Having amassed over 7 million followers on social media, Cornellà has achieved global acclaim through his instantly recognisable mix of pitch-black humour and deeply unsettling imagery.

Each work holds a mirror up to the depraved nature of society; confronting everything from our unnatural connection to social media and masturbatory selfie culture, to political topics such as abortion, addiction and gender issues – no subject is off limits.

At first glance, Cornellà’s work seems lighthearted and playful, his figures share a generic blank smile and sickly sweet colour palette, reminiscent of 1950’s advertising or airline safety pamphlets. Cornellà then twists these saccharine settings to dissect modern culture, projecting them to the darkest, most cynical conclusion. While some are affronted by his work, many connect over it, laughing whilst simultaneously feeling bad for laughing.

“I think we all laugh at misery. We must start from the idea that when we laugh, we laugh at someone or something. With empathy or not, there is always some degree of cruelty. In spite of that, I am aware that if one of my cartoons happened in real life I would not laugh at all.”

Satire has for a long time been one of humanity’s rare beacons of introspection. Through simplistic visual language, Cornellà satirizes the sinister and often bleak side of humanity within a myriad of bizarre and surreal scenarios. Despite suffering gunshot wounds, losing limbs and experiencing gruesome accidents with alarming regularity, the characters in Cornellà’s world keep on smiling.