Jean-Alain Corre
Born in 1981 in Landivisiau
Lives and works in Paris


EDUCATION
2006
DNSEP Ecole Nationale des Beaux Arts de Lyon

2004
ERG Ecole de recherche graphique, Brussels


SOLO SHOWS
2017
Décomposition d'une maison, Le 116, Montreuil, France

2015
&, Galerie Tlön, Nevers
Oozzz.. da zzzz...homing, Galerie Thomas Bernard - Cortex Athletico, Paris - exhibition views HERE
Artgenève, solo show, Galerie Thomas Bernard - Cortex Athletico, Geneva - exhibition views HERE
Ophiopocore dorcelopsis, Rectangle (invitation by Jérémie Boyard), Brussels

2014
Jungle Joh, Galerie Thomas Bernard - Cortex Athletico, Bordeaux - exhibition views HERE

2013
Docks Art Fair, solo show presented by La GAD, Galerie Arnaud Deschin, Lyon
0,00?, La GAD, Galerie Arnaud Deschin, Marseille

2012
Firewall, Love to love interface, Bikini, Lyon

2009
A Johnny Machine, Néon, Lyon


GROUP SHOWS
2018
Citizen Collision - contre l'architecture, The Ecole Nationale Superieure des Beaux-Arts de Lyon, Lyon, France
De fils ou de fibres, Abbaye Saint André - Centre d?art contemporain, Meymac

2017
Décomposition d'une maison, The 116, Montreuil, France

2016
Incorporated!, Les Ateliers de Rennes, Biennial of contemporary art, Halle de la Courrouze, Saint-Jacques-de-la-Lande
The Past is the Past, Galerie Thomas Bernard - Cortex Athletico, Paris - exhibition views HERE
Your Memories are our Future, Palais de Tokyo, Zurich
Urban Legend, SeMA (Seoul Museum of Art), Seoul
Double je, Palais de Tokyo, Paris
Catherine Vertige Collection, Komplot, Brussels
Not Really Really, Frédéric de Goldschmidt Collection, Brussels
Quand la matière devient forme, Centre d'art contemporain, Istres

2015     
The Exhange, Ovegaden, Institute of Contemporary Art, Copenhagen
To blow smoke in order to heal, Galerie Albert Baronian, Brussels
MOUCHARABIEH, Triangle, Marseille
Rendez-vous, Institute of Contemporary Arts Singapore (ICAS), Singapore

2014
L'époque, les humeurs, les valeurs, l'attention, curated by Castillo / Corrales, Fondation d'Entreprise Ricard, Paris
It's Got to Happen Inside First, 20/23, Paris
Rave, La GAD, Galerie Arnaud Deschin, Marseille
Quelque chose à vous dire, Galerie Thomas Bernard - Cortex Athletico, Paris - exhibition views HERE

2013
Plus jamais seul, Standard, Rennes
Moon Hoax, Lamartine, Lyon
Rendez-vous 13, IAC, Institut d'Art Contemporain, Villeurbanne

2012
La vitesse des masses-graisses, Le Local, Lyon
Fur ein abstraction océanique, Paris

2011
Kugler remix, Geneva
Fais gaffe aux biches, NSPP, Saint-Étienne
Commune, Néon, Lyon
Copy-left, Musée des Moulages, Lyon
The Navidson Record, Ilka Bree, Bordeaux

2010
Tu vas l'aimer, NSPP, Saint-Etienne

2009
Maildropper, IMOCA, Dublin
Alice borgne, Ilka Bree, Bordeaux
Projet!, Kiosque-image, Paris
Off Off, Musée des moulages, Lyon
Johnny 2, La général, Paris
Tout en cours, Lyon
Minéral murder, Néon, Lyon

2008
Dead Streaming Day, Webscene, ENBA, Lyon
12, Chantier Public, Lyon

2006
Multipolaire, Hall 14, Leipzig


RESIDENCIES
2015
Le Pavillon Neuflize OBC, Palais de Tokyo, Paris

2014

SummerLake, Annecy
Cité des Arts, Paris

2013
Triangle, Marseille


GRANT
2012
Aide à la création, Rhône-Alpes


CATALOGUE
2015
11 Great Joh Episoddes, Adéra Editions, Écoles supérieures d'art de Rhône-Alpes2017

Interview of Jean-Alain Corre by Franck Balland, Hors d'oeuvre.

Franck Balland: When did Johnny appear in your work and what motivated his creation?

Jean-Alain Corre: The first time I used Johnny was in 2006. Johnny was the main character in a text I had written that was called 'Johnny at the factory'. I spoke of a work experience that I had personally gone through when I was doing temporary work and I had spent entire days caressing bacon strips to get them to fit into containers. I didn't want to use the first-person narrative and I chose this name, that seemed relatively ordinary, to talk about my experience. Three years later, I built a machine linked to this text, with a sculpture projecting washing-up powder called Generatorscape, which I installed at Neon, in Lyon in 2009. There is a distance between the story and the object, but the abstract matter of the story, the link to the whole production area, is obvious. From then on, Johnny acted as a go-between, between me and the artwork. As an artist is regularly asked to talk about his work, Johnny quickly became a solution for me to be able to explain certain things, namely with these little texts that I continued to write. In the end, what was just a solution ended up intensifying, and now Johnny is completely part of my work.

FB: You mention an ordinary name, but Johnny is an imported name, and echoes in some ways some of your works' characteristics, in which one can also find cultural imported elements.

J-AC: Johnny combines French and American culture. Like Johnny Hallyday if you want, who imported songs from the United States and just translated them. Johnny enabled me to lay down a world of reference, and link my works to this world that is fuelled mainly by my experiences, by the films that I have seen or by some of the sitcoms that I grew up with.

FB: Can you explain how you organise the writing of the different Johnny episodes and which status you give to these texts, or snippets of texts, that are sometimes visible in your exhibitions?

J-AC: There is nothing systematic in the writing of the episodes. Some of the texts appear before the artworks, and some after. I don't want to make a principle out of their writing. Moreover, it is not a necessary element to understand my work. I spread signs of his world hoping that something may click, without a need for explanation. I often present Johnny as a character without a scenario, as his appearances do not make up a story; he simply wanders at the heart of a world in which I come to glean.

FB: How would you define his role?

J-AC: On one hand, Johnny could be considered as quite a conceptual structure, in which statements would have been replaced by this character. One can therefore share certain states of mind, certain situations. He is not a psychoanalytic double; I prefer to talk of him in biological terms. I consider him more as a motor, an autonomous brain that allows me to produce things. Johnny does not come to me, he is not buried within me and I do not need to go looking for him to find him. It is a way of apprehending reality that I use as a visual process to propose objects.

FB: In the end, Johnny appears as the negative of Matt Mullican's 'That Person'. The artist lets this other person emerge when he is in a sort of trance; 'That Person' is an expression of his subconscious that creates its own artworks, its own aesthetic. There is however a junction point between 'That Person' and Johnny. A common interest for what consumer society produces, a sincere and non-ironical fondness for movie stars especially?

J-AC: Yes, Johnny is a sort of transplant that grows on my work, he's a sort of 'alien' presence thanks to whom I can touch upon a certain affective dimension. This is what explains that, when watching Demi Moore in Ghost, I wanted to do pottery. Without this scene in the film, I had no reason to use this material. This link to the first degree interested me. With Johnny, I can alternate fascination and detachment stages. There is no irony for Demi Moore, or for all these sitcoms like Beverly Hills or Premiers Baisers [a French teen sitcom from the 90's]. These programs may appear light and fluffy but they interest me in the way in which they create an environment, and I like putting them on the same plan as a city's urban landscape. From then on, I structured my work into episodes a bit like these series.

FB: Beyond these references that make up the backdrop of Johnny's world, in the end it looks like you are looking, in your objects, for a way of working with the materials in a more empirical manner...

J-AC: An artwork is like gardening for me. I like Michel Blazy's work for this reason. I too, when I do something, I like to watch it grow, as a gardener would with his lawn. The plant world seems more interesting than the animal world: it is much more visual once you start becoming aware of its way of existing. Some plants mutate quickly to adapt to an environment, a plant can naturally have 2 different types of DNA, as if 2 individuals made up only one, one arm coming from one, and the eye from another. Johnny's artworks are in this practice, close to agriculture let's say, with a more everyday reference field, that is more akin to the supermarket leaflet.