The evolution of an artist’s practice is something we feel very privileged to observe over time and we revel in the successful steps forward that any artist takes, preferring to see it as an act of courage. Street Artist Isaac Cordal is currently taking a big jump forward, consolidating his strengths and doubling down on his convictions in ever more powerful ways for his new exhibition entitled “Ego Monuments”, now showing at Galerie C.O.A. in Montreal, Canada.

His vocabulary intact and increasingly sophisticated, something tells you that it is all synthesizing and gathering with the momentum of a storm. Here he is mocking the clique mentality of the politburo, presenting his company men as a block of distracted dullards, each separately miserable and indistinguishable in their groupthink.

The image of one of his hapless figures as a crucified businessman with slightly ghoulish smirk taps into the themes of self-important sacrifice and holy reverence of so-many corporate heroes, frankly flagellating the idea of either. Elsewhere soaring pedestals lift the individual so high that coming down would likely result in death.

As a disarming collection of installations in the gallery you may revel at the methods Cordal devises to communicate the collective blindness pushing us further toward oblivion, his blunt critique of consumer culture and mindless navel-gazing is a reassuring mediocrity that warms you gradually– as the water rolls toward a boil.

“We are the new version of colonialism,” Cordal says his new press release, “we are waiting for climate change by sunbathing on the beach. We live permanently exposed, controlled, leaning out to the public balcony of the social networks and Big Brother has become our flat-mate.”

As we examine our public statues and the messages of our massive free-standing art in parks, Cordal suggests that size matters in this age of the SELF. “Monuments to the ego would be so big that it was necessary to change the scale of these works to place them into the gallery.”

Elsewhere he comments on the sorrowful narcissism that permeates the culture, as expressed by his figures here: “Almost all the sculptures that are part of the exhibition have their eyes closed, immersed in their smartphones or virtual reality headsets. Blind to their own reality, they don’t want to see beyond their own perimeter. ”

Isaac Cordal, “Ego Monuments” at Galerie C.O.A. in Montreal, Canada is open to the general public until October 12th.

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