The cosmonaut Olga is the protagonist at the centre of the SPACELOVE cycle. She travels through space and time and considers the great questions of humanity from new angles. Olga‘s parallel world appears as a smooth projection surface that leaves the recipient space for their own interpretations. The images – whether the surface of the moon or spaceships – are reduced to the essentials and therefore easy to experience.
And yet individual, apparently randomly placed objects or flashes of thought lead into
a depth that, depending on how far you want to get involved, allows you to drift into
ironic perspectives on the fundamentals of humanity.
Started as a mini comic soap-opera, which was published in a small, self-bound, limited
edition volume, the retro-spacelove adventure, intended as a gag, slowly developed
into a multimedia art project in the following years. Olga‘s experiences as Michaela
Konrad‘s alter ego are related in paintings, limited editions, multimedia installations
and experimental comic publications. The narrative thread does not consist of a story
in the actual sense, but of individual episodes, each of which results in a self-contained
pictorial poem. Existential considerations and personal experiences of the artist are
connected and implemented in sequences with or without text.
SPACELOVE is visually inspired by golden age science fiction comics such as Flash
Gordon by Alex Raymond or by science fiction television series such as Space 1999 or
Star Trek. Michaela Konrad paraphrases icons of pop culture and assimilates them into
her work, which is stylistically characterized by a clear language of forms and bright
colours.
SPACELOVE Series:
THE VACUUM CLEANER:
