Anne-Lise Coste

Nogueras Blanchard presents F R A N C E, an exhibition of drawings by Annelise Coste (Marseille, 1973). The exhibition focuses on a large drawing wall painted on the walls of the gallery and a series of drawings of various formats on paper.

Using his imagination, Annelise Coste creates a fantasy world based on their codes. On the small drawings serie the artist deals with one topic for page, as if it were a novel or a diary where between-mixed feelings and confidences with political statements and social commentary. His drawings are a portrait of the world and an expression of his mental and emotional state. Borrows elements of popular iconography as Mickey Mouse or the logo of Evian and contrasts with repeating slogans, metaphors and figures of speech; our focus is constantly changing from text to forms, and form the forms to the meaning oh the text- Her comments about the everyday realpolitik and manifest a critical tone and range from idealism, irony and desperation.

The drawing is of fundamental importance in the work of Annelise Coste, both as an autonomous discipline in their wall-drawings and airbrush paintings, as if the whole were a great collage that unfolds its imaginary universe. The spontaneous and frenzied quality airbrush painting on the wall approaches the graphic violence of the art of graffiti. There in the strategy of creating a deliberate rejection of the adoption of linguistic or artistic conventions. Cost appropriates the gallery space in the same way that graffiti does public space and recycle anarchist, anti-capitalist and reactionary imagery of urban art to infuse it with a personal, romantic and poetic sensibility.

As the title of the exhibition Coste deconstructs the word FRANCE, posing a clearly emotional and personal to the ideological conditions of their country of origin approach. In the drawing is titled the same name, Coste shows a kind of deformation of the symbol of the nation, cock, where the three colors are the only iconic reference. With this colors, Cost reveals his inner world, their joys and fears, exposing itself and creating an inventory of the anxieties and traumas that we all share but often hide under the cloak of rationalism and comprehensive rhythm of modern life.

Annelise Coste has exhibited his work in exhibitions: Midnight Walkers, Kunsthaus Baselland, Switzerland (2006); Jugend von heute, Schirn Kunsthalle, Frankfurt (2006); Global World / Private Universe, Kunstmuseum St Gallen, Switzerland; The Collective Unconscious, Migros Museum, Zurich (2002); Urban Diaries: Young Swiss Art, Alcalá 31, Madrid (2003). Currently he has a solo exhibition loin, loin, loin in Kunsthaus Glarus, Switzerland in April 2006 and held an exhibition at Le Centre Culturel Suisse in Paris.

Annelise Coste lives and works in Zurich, Switzerland.