Veit Korn

In Rapanui I, we are not confronted with monumentality, but with confinement. A human head – quiet yet alert – is enclosed within a rough, copper-coated wooden frame. This is not a pedestal, but a prison. The sculpture captures a state of thought under pressure: a figure that sees but cannot act; that understands but cannot escape.

The surface of the head, sculpted from stone and partially covered in patinated copper, evokes corrosion, decay, and time. The oxidized copper frame becomes a porous barrier between inside and outside. What emerges is the existential tension between consciousness and limitation, between the desire for freedom and the impossibility of breaking free.

In the spirit of existentialism, the frame becomes a metaphor for the human condition: confined by origin, body, time, and language—yet capable of reflection. The face is not empty, not resigned. It watches. It questions. It recognizes its state—and in that awareness lies its dignity.

What Korn reveals is not a victory over limitation, but the moment when the confined self becomes conscious. The gaze becomes resistance. Thought becomes rebellion—if only within.

Rapanui I does not reference another culture. It is a contemporary self-portrait: a meditation on being human in a world that offers no clear answers. Framed. Awake. Asking.