Jean Luc Cornec

I don't know much about Jean Luc Cornec or much about his other works.  I can't even recall how I came across his work... But I have to include him in my blogs because of the brilliance of his 2006 installation in the museum of telecommunication in Frankfurt.  It is being called Telephone Sheep on the web.  Whether that is the real name of the installation or not, I am not sure...  Despite my little knowledge of this work, a lot is "communicated" to the viewer by this work. 

These sheep sculptures are wonderful examples of recycled art.  They are made out of old, obsolete rotary telephones.  While the phone on the cradle makes a great representation of a sheep head, I feel that it is also a smart move to clearly identify what the sheep are made of.  Like a title to the work.  The bent telephone heads perfectly resemble knobly knees, legs and hooves in one fluid piece.  Cornec did a fantastic job crafting the musculature and form of the animals.  The various positions and placements of the telephone sheep make them a herd and seem to give them life.  It's as if this installation is a still frame of them living and reacting to each other and their surroundings.

While the playful Telephone Sheep could be simply fun representations of life from an inanimate object, the fact that these are made from recycled objects provokes deeper thinking.  Telephone Sheep seems to communicate (pun unintended...) the relationship we have with objects that were once manufactured, used and eventually discarded with the emergence of new technology.  This installation urges the viewer to think about the our shifting views on the function of materials.

While this could be considered "green art,"  I feel that the prevalent message (another pun!) is the shifting views I described.  I also think the simplicity of this work is important.  We, as modern viewers with excelled technology,  would view the both the subject matter and the medium as something simple and plain by themselves.  But when combined together, modern viewers will see value and intricacies.