Controversial he is since he thrive in showing what others don't dare to show, a certain sexuality that seems to drive the world but is kept under wrap in our Judeo/ Christian societies. His work is sometimes dominated by the sexual tension between sex and church, the tension between the forbidden and the inevitable. He shows our needs to explore our desires and redefining love in a broader context that breaks the confine of our education. He sees love everywhere and what it means to feel in love. Even when he paints the iguassu falls or Fisherman Wharf in San Francisco, one has to be moved by the sensual power of the work.It is vibrant and full of pent up eroticism.
Guenard might be after all about the truth, about our real life as it should be, about the world as it is seldom expressed. He seems to always be attracted by the taboos that make life so limited to expose them crude and raw to our consciousness. Yes! we have a sex and it is fun and beautiful, yes! there is life in sexual fantasies . His message is opening a window to a world we know so little about. He wants us to be close to life and not walk away from it.As an artist he unveils the profound emotional undercurrents of our societies that won't express themselves. He shows us what our subconscious is telling us but our social reality do not authorize us to say or express. To paraphrase Vincent Van Gogh, Claude Guenard visualizes how we feel about life not only about how we see life.
It was not surprising then that it's next target would be Print Advertising. A bastion of fake and stereotyped images designed with extreme control around a rigid set of rules. Re-interpreting the Channel print campaign, a brand who denies itself any sexual stimuli and whose coldness, the results of decade of perceived brand exactness limit the brand's emotional message is an interesting place to start.
The Chanel ads "retouched" by Guenard suddenly bring the bad girl or the bad boy out of the good girl or good boy generally portrayed. Furthermore, a painting " detournee" that associates the French word Vite with the brand name Ch-nel minus the letter A that phonetically means quick also in German is maybe a way to make Chanel aficionados cringe. The well known blurry romantic past of the fame fashion designer with the occupying Germans is a NO-NO in branding circles and there again is brought to life.
Taking prestige brands like Chanel and shaking their momified images and lack of emotions to show how people feel subconsciously about those brands is quite visionary. Indeed consumers look at luxury brands from a totally different perspective: with envy, lust, jaleousy, sexual desires and need for self- esteem. That truth, never told, now has become an art in the eyes of Claude Guenard.
Again we will be either elated or shaken, amazed or envious, stimulated or disgusted but Claude Guenard will not let us indifferent. He might even increase the sales of that brand!
Marc Gobe
President & Editor
Emotional Branding LLC.
www.emotionalbranding.com