Blackfoot Pathways: Sculpture in the Wild

Cornelia Konrads

​Artist in Residence 2018

My first approach to an unknown area is always: walking. Without a certain destination I follow the attraction of particular features of the landscape, shapes, tracks, light situations. The site of my work is not just a background for me, it's more a kind of "fabric", with many material and immaterial layers. The goal is, that my work becomes part of this fabric - merging into the site, as if it had always been there.

Walking in the sculpture park I came to the dry creek bed, a small valley, which meanders through the otherwise flat terrain. So the idea of a bridge came quite "naturally". Also the material came quite "naturally" - it was just nearby: dead trees, found in the park and weathered boards from a broken cabin in the mountains. This kind of coincidence makes the work look "natural", like a normal bridge someone has built to cross the creek.

But unfortunately crossing is impossible: the bridge is breaking apart ! Or are the pieces just coming together? Which invisible forces are in action here? It appears, as if a film has stopped - a moment of "frozen time".

I'm fascinated by this transient thing called "moment" or "presence." The mysterious rupture between past and future. Consequently my work aims to cause a moment of irritation, by adding an element to the scene, which refuses to fit into the expected order.  On the whole when we look, we don't see. We wander in a sort of monologue with ourselves. Moments of irritation and amazement can shake us out of this mental drowsiness.

I like this idea of showing that there is something invisible to be found in the visible. I like to awaken the joy of thinking about possibilities, about what might be. I'm interested in the constant interplay of order and chaos!  Material and immaterial. Construction and deconstruction. And I don't see them as contradictions. They are like poles that exist in everything.

If the bridge is breaking apart, or growing together? Both is possible at the same time...​

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The Bridge (2018)

​Cornelia Konrads (Germany)

Material: lodge pole, weathered barn boards, steel rope, fasteners

Length: 66 Feet (20 Metres)

Height: 13 Feet (4 Metres)

BLACKFOOT PATHWAYS: SCULPTURE IN THE WILD