On Cornelia Konrads' Work .
Heroic Revolt and Poetic Contradiction

"Buchobjekte" (Book Objects) turn up in Cornelia Konrads’ work between 2002 and 2006. Their small format and their intimate character, which is meant for their presentation in interior space, distinguish them from the artist’s large in situ works in public spaces. The Book Objects nevertheless take up a central place in her creative work. They smooth the way for understanding her artistic biography. Konrads studied philosophy, German language and literature, and cultural studies, finding her way to an existence as a freelance artist relatively late. The ontology of the Book Objects conceals—or so it seems—an exorcistic act, with whose help Konrads drove out her academic way of thinking in order to awaken the creative forces of the unconscious, the dream-like and surreal, the faculties of intransigent and dissident thought. We know about the power of language as an instrument of control, whose logic inscribes itself in the bodies and minds of those controlled by it. With her Book Objects, Konrads makes us aware of the syntagmatic character of language, but she does away with the semantic character of the control structures that produce meaning.

She liquidates them in an almost playful way. Be it that text and script consist solely of the additive accumulation of the short word »and,« which as a copula no longer creates clause constructions but merely connects itself with itself.

Or be it that in Splitterbuch (Splitter Book) she fixes and arranges pieces and fragments of twigs in such a way that their structure suggests associations with a system of language; however, she no longer wants to signify the resulting script, rather just let it be.

In Blindbuch (Blind Book) Konrads develops a kind of alphabet out of rose thorns, which figuratively reminds us that one must experience pain in order to see in love. …