Like Joan Cornellà? Check. Got the book? Check. Got the t-shirt? Check. Wanna see his latest solo show? Double check.

Well then, now you can.

Joan Cornellà has a series of solos shows exhibiting his hilariously dark, twisted, yet utterly brilliant comicstrip paintings planned for across the globe.

Most recently, one of Joan’s solo shows opened in Shanghai. Next month another opens at the Galerie Arts Factory, Paris, from July 1st-August 26th. This will be followed by one at the Josée Bienvenu Gallery, New York, from July 14th-30th. Then in September, there’s another at the Hoxton Arches, London from September 15th-October 1st. Joan will be present at all of these shows doing the book-signing and hand-shaking and probably head-nodding to your many questions.

If you really like Joan and one of his solo shows is a-comin’ near you—then you’d be a goddam fool to miss it.

Of course, if you’re nowhere near any of these prized metropolises, then you’ll just have to make do with this small yet beautifully formed selection of Joan’s recent and not so recent work. Enjoy!
 

 

 
More surreal black comedy, after the jump…

 
At DM we are yuuuuuge fans of the work of the Spanish illustrator Joan Cornellà, whose delightfully colorful and macabre creations have been warping our brains for a good many years now.

Cornellà‘s comics are invariably deceptive: they almost always appear to be targeted at children, quite similar to a Technicolor version of Ernie Bushmiller’s Nancy, but the content of the panels is cheerfully replete with grisly and dark occurrences such as beheadings, bestiality, depravity, and the like. Our own Amber Frost took a look at Cornellà‘s marvelous work last year.

In 2015 Fantagraphics published Mox Nox, a collection of comics by Cornellà, and they have a Cornellà title called Zonzo that is slated for early 2017.

A few days ago Wilco announced that a new album called Schmilco (a pretty clear shout-out it would appear to Harry Nilsson’s 1971 album Schmilsson) will be released this September. It turns out that Wilco has had the good taste to outsource the duty of album art to Cornellà, as you can see above. I undertook some rudimentary online searches and was unable to find any previous album art by Cornellà. Lucy Bourton of It’s Nice That asserted that Schmilco represents “the first time Joan’s work has been used on an album cover.”

There’s more after the jump…

 
Several of us here at Dangerous Minds are big fans of the utterly twisted Spanish illustrator Joan Cornellà. A distinctive stylist and a master of sequential art, Cornellà packs some of the most horrible mutations and atrocities imaginable into bright, colorful six-panel narratives in which his preternaturally chipper characters bear the brunt of appalling misfortunes all smiles. He first appeared in this blog a little over a year ago, when my erstwhile colleague Amber Frost wrote “Cornellà‘s work deals in mutilation and disfigurement, sadistic or oblivious violence, the alienation of modernity and a total disregard for human life. (I know. It doesn’t sound funny, but trust me.)” Spot on. 

Last year, Cornellà launched a Kickstarter campaign to fund the creation of 30 animated shorts, some based on existing cartoons of his, some original works created specifically for animation. The campaign succeeded wildly, netting €91,647. The first one posted, “Mystique,” was released last winter to tease the project for the crowdfunding, but new Cornellà cartoons began appearing on YouTube three weeks ago. (Some possibly unauthorized Cornellà animations are also circulating; what we’ve linked here comes straight from Cornellà‘s own channel.)  All of them are fantastic, demented little hit-and-run gags, ranging in length from 14 to 28 seconds, so we suspect you have time to dig ‘em all. If you’re new to Cornellà’s work and this stuff sends you, you might like to know that his comics have been anthologized in the books Zonzo and Mox Nox.
 

 
A comic cornucopia of cartoon Cornellà, after the jump…

 
Spanish cartoonist Joan Cornellà combines black humor and extreme discomfort, most famously in his wordless, six-panel comics. Cornellà‘s work deals in mutilation and disfigurement, sadistic or oblivious violence, the alienation of modernity and a total disregard for human life. (I know. It doesn’t sound funny, but trust me.) Cornellà‘s aesthetic runs completely counterintuitive to his themes—his colors are lovely and soothing, and his human figures are glassy-eyed and friendly, as if they walked out of a children’s cartoon.

Uncomfortable laughter aside, these beautiful little comics really bear the mark of Cornellà‘s fine arts training. His book Mox Nox is fantastic by the way, especially since the high-resolution images really let you see the texture of paper and pigment. It lets you really embrace the depth of that head-wound.
 

 

 
Plenty more after the jump…