Meta Knol asks, “What world does the artist’s alter ego inhabit -that highly imaginative creature that urges him to draw? What does that reservation of his own imagination look like?”[1] As if recounting the enigmatic elements of a recurring dream, Cornelissen abandons agency, becoming the extension of a pencil in hand that compulsively attempts to arrive at understanding through repetition. However, the pencil is limited by the artist’s knowledge; like Escher’s impossible objects, Cornelissen’s pathways aspire to apexes of awareness, inevitably returning us back to the places at which we began -but propelling us into a psychological beyond.
“Cornelissen’s elastic pencil,” Knol states, “prefers to seek out ambiguity; it winds up in labyrinths -that is the way it goes.”[2] Cornelissen’s animated drawing, Het geheugen, exemplifies this insight in its winding through both hand-drawn and digital spaces, mimicking the dizzying compartments of the artist’s mind, transplanted into the mind of a faceless figure we encounter at the beginning of our expedition. Timidly roving the alien terrain, we both scrutinize miniscule crevices and absorb vast unpopulated expanses; we take steps forward and steps backward, surveying the space in its complexity and completeness; we stay low to the ground and float up to the ceiling, undaunted by the laws of gravity and dimensionality. Occasional organic forms - a gulping pipe, a hanging mammarian bulge - interrupt this psychological, labyrinthine journey; like the Cheshire Cat, they pop up in unexpected places, act as markers that pronounce, “you are here,” suggesting to us that we might arrive somewhere - if only we walk long enough.
Text by Erin Silver
[1] Meta Knol, “The Elastic Pencil,” Het Reservaat, 2003.
[2] Knol.
Robbie Cornelissen | Passage (1) | 2007 Graphite on paper | 29 x 36 cm | Private collection
