On Cornelia Konrads' Work .
Heroic Revolt and Poetic Contradiction

… The Staubbuch (Dust Book), too, negates the conservative character of the writing, and in a liturgy of repeating spirals it thematicizes what is left of us when life has come to an end.

The most radical act is one of exorcising the conventional system of writing in her Brandbücher (Burn Books).

Whether by means of exploding caps, flaring sparklers or an attacking soldering iron—nothing reminiscent of conventional writing remains except a pronounced burn mark.

Even if the creative chronology apparently gets muddled up in the process—sometimes a maturing phase is necessary before a manifesto can develop—the Book Objects are basically the mentally anticipated inaugural act for what Konrads creates as an artist. What becomes possible in the spellbinding character of the Book Objects

 

is that which takes shape as the artist’s oeuvre in the period before and after their emergence. In the following we will concentrate on those of her works created between 2004 and 2006, without completely neglecting earlier works, above all when the forming principles of older works repeat themselves in newer ones. This is clearly the case in the "Piles", those sculptures in which Konrads follows the forming principle of heaping or creating piles. Amongst the new "Piles" are the sculptures that originated in Korea, above all the "Pile of Wishes" (2004), a conical accumulation of stones whose peak lifts up as if it wants to break away from the static pile of stones to fly straight up into the sky—like the pleas and prayers of people in Asia who raise cones of wishing stones, a shamanic custom that is older than Buddhism. …