MERYGODIGNACOLLET

Cognitive dissonance (2019)

The phenomenon of cognitive dissonance can occur in familial relationships and in politics. The vitriol in the UK over Brexit, the US abusing refugees in a nation of immigrants, the corruption that starves people in verdant Venezuela are all indicators.

There are many people that suspend logic and create stories that allow them to carry on. The facts are dulled by felonious stories, apathy and fear.

Godigna Collet’s work “Cognitive Dissonance” addresses this state of being. Her sculptural amalgamations are credible yet unrealistic.

Completely disparate items are transformed into one object. Her harmonious use of material, color and composition trick the eye into thinking, that could work, no matter how ridiculous the dichotomy she presents.

While reminiscent of artists such as Duchamp, Rauchenberg, Beuys’ is closer. He used the soft and charming material of fat and felt to dramatize his story personal trauma in war. As Claudi Mesch wrote he “confronted post-traumatic life head on, foregrounding a struggle for psychic recovery.” 1. It’s his specificity of material and eagle eyed expression of desperate survival that relate to Godigna Collet.

This series of work illustrates broken ideas, eggs that won’t hatch, knives that won’t cut. It simultaneously coaxes you in, gently holding your eye with clean lines, careful surface treatments, a limited pallet and a sense of ingenuity.

These new hybrids are potentially inventions for a sustainable future. Her graceful blending of rough and smooth, old and new, erase the true functions of the objects as she combines them.

They serve to remind us of our own dysfunction. They are not ironic, they are shots across the bow, warning us of our failures even as we may feel clever.

Rachel Koper, Sept.2019


1.Claudia Mesch, Joseph Beuys: Critical Lives, Reaktion Books, 2017