The Paradise of Cornelius Kolig

The uncategorizable artist Cornelius Kolig lives and works today in the same small community in which he was born and grew up, on the border of Italy, Austria and Slovenia. Preoccupied with the environment - both the natural, organic environment and the artificial, industrial (and often polluting) one - his works may take the form of a huge road-side hoarding of a heart, a strange machine for exploding shoes, or a gruesome collection of artificial body parts. He is obsessed with plastics, and the play between reality and artificiality, high art and shocking vulgarity. At times his work is close to that of the younger Canadian artist Mark Prent (see 637). Kolig has constructed for himself a bizarre studio-house. The lush garden which he tends lovingly is dominated by an ominous sheet- metal tower into which the artist can climb. In a large gallery-room, meanwhile, he holds a permanent display of his assemblages. Rituals fascinate him, especially the `ordinary' rituals of everyday life. He is obsessed both with the human body and with human religion and spirituality. Amazingly, in a local Catholic church, he has mounted an outrageously iconoclastic installation, to the bewilderment of the visitors. In his work he seeks to realize an `ironic paradise' of plastic beauty. Clearly something of social misfit, Kolig celebrates the `uselessness' of art. Sensitive, lyrical, reflective, this film conveys the curious atmosphere surrounding this eccentric and solitary creator - and leaves intact the ultimate mysteriousness of his vocation.

© 1998-2008 The Roland Collection & Pira Intl.