A Journey Through the Art of Joan Cornellà, Between Irony and Cynicism

While travelling has become physically difficult and trying during the pandemic, Joan Cornellà, with his ironically dystopic vision of reality - his distinctive trait which has made her one of the most biting illustrators of our times - allows us to make impossible journeys between reality and fiction, between quotidian and fantasy and which, in this case, lead to Shanghai, the city which is hosting his largest museum show to date. The event, organised at the HOW Art Museum, is the first exhibition of the Spanish illustrator and comic creator in a Chinese museum. Eleven new works on paper and a sculptural installation are an homage to the scathing and disenchanted irony of Cornellà. The exhibition reveals the capacity of the artist to trust in surreal irony and black humour to capture the essence of everyday realities and, above all, the human condition in a historical moment marked by collective phobias and social upheavals. The characters of Cornellà, rigorously depicted in silence, speak through their gestures, often revealing the lack of lucidity of humans, thus denouncing prejudice, violence and racism in all their forms, even criticising the “dependence” on new technologies.