Charlotte Coquen: Tagada, 2017

Charlotte Coquen: Tagada, 2017

During the summer of 2017, Charlotte Coquen began the production of a series of work on fictional happiness. She chose to write a story. At the heart of it, she introduces Prosper Tagada, whose name associates the character of a song by Maurice Chevallier and the famous Haribo candy inspired by the latter. How such a character, with a bad reputation, seducer and profiteer, could inspire the name of a candy «for the little ones and the big ones» sold in France in the billions. Tagada is an enamelled ceramic rainbow whose marshmallow colors gush out and flow on the floor in a latex puddle.

The rainbow derives its essence from the real meteorological phenomenon, as immense and elusive as is the happiness proposed by Prosper. The artist invites us to enjoy the social codes of happiness as codes of painting. Tagada is an impression, not a representation.

Narratively, the rainbow is a bridge that could lead to happiness but a path that leads nowhere because it disappears under the feet of the one who borrows it. The disappearance of Tagada is mentioned in a series of prints entitled «Chez Prosper Tagada». Here, the image created is a representation of the Prosper Tagada’s interior, a memory of this fictional character, a representation of the intangible phenomenon. In each engraving, three lines lithographed by Bruno Robbe (lithographer in Frameries, Belgium) mark the three dimensional spaces in which the rainbow is painted by Charlotte Coquen.