BEYOND REALITY: The Collages of Inside-a-Ginger
GATA sat down with multifaceted artist Cornelius Grunt AKA Inside-a-Ginger to discuss collage art, philosophy and the unthinkable.
Based in Bielefeld, Germany, Inside-a-Ginger’s visual language is defined by the reflection and manipulation of reality. Using both analog and digital techniques in his artwork, the artist’s imagination reflects a unique point of view created from the exhaustive analysis of what lies beyond reality.
Observing Inside-a-Ginger’s creations—often deconstructive portraits, there is a sense of dissection of a face, and at the same time a construction of a new dimension, where the artist takes you to understand his psyche. A new dimension that involves negative objects communicating in the same pleasing language.
Could you introduce yourself to GATA?
I'm Cornelius Grunt, 35 years old, I live in Bielefeld, Germany and I work as a social worker at a group home for kids and young adults. I am a member of Kulturhaus- Ostblock, a social art association in Bielefeld, where I create collages and other art objects; produce music and create animations for my music, and have been inline skating since forever.
Is there a story behind your artistic name “Inside a Ginger”?
Various strange nicknames were circulating in my circle of friends, certainly also some that I am still not aware of. Sometimes, I was just the “dignified” or “soulless” and in other situations the “Soulless Ginger”. When I finally decided to present my collages on Instagram, I thought it would make sense to use a pseudonym for this project, as I have done in the past for others, especially music projects.
It felt to me that even though I didn't add titles or explanatory texts, I would reveal a large part of my abysses or, more generally speaking, my inner life. I found all of this aptly subsumed under this synonym and it illustrates my perceived solipsistic (the belief that the self is all that can be known to exist) claustrophobia. Perhaps one or the other has noticed the similarity to a certain film title, with Ryan Gosling in the lead role.
How did you start making art?
As a child I was totally fascinated by Lego and kept building my own creations, a little later I wrote poems and other texts until I finally got interested in rap music. I remember getting strange remarks about my style from outside, saying that my style was so different, weird and special; I personally didn't really notice it. Only when collages finally came into my life, I turned to the subject of art again with a completely new point of view, and retrospectively, I was able to better understand, what others might have meant by the peculiarity “different”. If I like something, I didn't just want to imitate it, I wanted to practice it with my personal touch and, if possible, go even further.
“I also draw from despair, insanity, indifference, imperfection, from the idea of being unborn, from the idea of death, from being cut off, from grief, from pain, from my own destructiveness, from restlessness, from dreams and the Mediation and from the ambiguous potential of what could still take place in process. ”
Where do you find your main inspiration?
As part of my degree in education, I had the opportunity to read various philosophical books, which was certainly helpful in many ways. But I draw my inspiration from everything that surrounds me; maybe even more from what eludes my personalised reduced perception, as well as the idea of what will probably remain unthinkable for our thinking organ and what cannot be represented in human language.
I also draw from despair, insanity, indifference, imperfection, from the idea of being unborn, from the idea of death, from being cut off, from grief, from pain, from my own destructiveness, from restlessness, from dreams and the Mediation and from the ambiguous potential of what could still take place in process. Perhaps I am trying to use art to translate all these negatively connoted objects into an aesthetically pleasing language for me.
You work with both analogue and digital collages, what is your preferred style of working?
Presumably, my preference tends to work in analogue, but I'm also working more digitally at the moment, as I create my music tracks with FL Studio, post-process my collages with Photoshop and do the video processing with Photoshop and DaVinci Resolve. So, I would have to say that I like the entire process, which includes everything, as such.
Most of your work is focused on the human shape - you often deconstruct faces. Is there any reason behind this area of focus?
From a neurocentric point of view, one would argue that the brain is the constructor of the phenomenon of consciousness. In this regard, I have dealt with various other theories, including panpsychism (the belief that every element has an individual consciousness) and, more generally, with "New Realism".
When creating, I actually try to focus completely on the process and not think too much at all. Later I usually find out that a lot of my inner life is in the collages. My choice of material is shaped by this, as is the arrangement of the fragments. I have already made many attempts to create non-portrait-based art, but after a certain period of time I always come back to portraits. It illustrates, that if you try to determine the subject consciousness or reality, you are also losing track of it.
“ It illustrates, that if you try to determine the subject consciousness or reality, you are also losing track of it. ”
Collage opens up very intriguing abstract worlds; what is the goal or the concept that you would like to attain through your work?
In principle, it is exactly what fascinates me so much about collages or mixed media art and sample-based beats. That you take something already existing, process it further and in the end something completely new comes out of it. Then I often ask myself whether a deterministic process has simply taken place or whether I was actually the designer of this new level of reality. The question remains open for me as to whether the material already contained the potential for the resulting image. I also wonder how the images are perceived by other people. My guess is, that the perceiving consciousness is like an individual fingerprint and I despair that these other perspectives will probably remain hidden and inaccessible to me forever.
“My guess is, that the perceiving consciousness is like an individual fingerprint and I despair that these other perspectives will probably remain hidden and inaccessible to me forever. ”